EatTheRich
President
As we go back in Earth's evolutionary history, in each period of geologic time what living relatives that we still had a common ancestor with do we encounter as we move toward the beginning of the epoch? Semicolons are used to indicate progressively more distant relatives.
Epoch
Holocene (present): humans
Pleistocene (3 million years ago or mya): humans
Pliocene (5mya): chimpanzees
Miocene (23mya): gorillas; orangutans; gibbons
Oligocene (34mya): Old World Monkeys (e.g., baboons); New World Monkeys (e.g., spider monkeys)
Eocene (56mya): tarsiers
Paleocene (66mya): wet-nosed primates (e.g., lemurs)
Late Cretaceous (101mya): colugos; tree shrews; rodents and lagomorphs (e.g., rabbits)
Early Cretaceous (145mya): Laurasiatheres (e.g., dogs, seals, pigs, cattle, goats, bats, whales); Afrotheres (e.g., elephants and manatees) and Xenarthrans (e.g., armadillos, anteaters, and sloths)
Period
Jurassic (201mya): marsupials; monotremes (e.g., platypuses)
Triassic (252mya): monotremes
Permian (299mya): monotremes
Carboniferous (359mya): reptiles and birds; amphibians
Devonian (419mya): lungfish; coelacanths; ray-finned fishes (e.g., trout, tuna, eels, etc.)
Silurian (444mya): cartilaginous fishes (e.g., sharks)
Ordovician (485mya): hagfishes and lampreys
Cambrian (541mya): tunicates; lancelets; acorn worms and echinoderms (e.g., starfish)
Ediacaran (635mya): protostomes (e.g., arthropods, mollusks, tardigrades, flatworms, roundworms, earthworms); xenoturbellids ("strange flatworms") and acoelomorphs ("no cavity forms")
Cryogenian (720mya): cnidarians (e.g., jellyfish, corals); placozoans ("flat animals"); comb jellies; sponges
Tonian (1 billion years ago): choanoflagellates ("funnel flagellates").
It starts to get speculative beyond this point.
Stenian (1.2bya): filasteres ("thread stars"); pluriformes (e.g., Corallochytrium "coral reef spores"); ichthyospores ("fish spores")
Ectasian (1.4bya): holomycots (e.g., fungi)
Calymmian (1.6bya): apusomonadids ("footless simple things"); breviates ("brief things"); amoebozoans; CRuMs (e.g., rigifilids "rigid threads"); Malawimonas ("Malawi simple things"); metamonads (e.g., giardia)
Era
Paleoproterozoic (2.5bya): corticates (e.g., plants, red algae, green algae, malaria, ciliates, diatoms, brown algae); eoloukates ("ancient light ones"); percolozoans ("strained through animals"); euglenozoans (e.g., sleeping sickness); archaea
Eon
Archaean (4bya): gram-positive bacteria (staph, strep, anthrax, tuberculosis, leprosy, etc.); Deinococcus ("dreadful granule"); chlamydia, syphilis, Lyme disease, and their close and distant relatives; blue-green algae, chloroplasts, bacterial thermophiles, and their close and distant relatives; cholera, plague, gonorrhea, salmonella, mitochondria, and their close and distant relatives
Epoch
Holocene (present): humans
Pleistocene (3 million years ago or mya): humans
Pliocene (5mya): chimpanzees
Miocene (23mya): gorillas; orangutans; gibbons
Oligocene (34mya): Old World Monkeys (e.g., baboons); New World Monkeys (e.g., spider monkeys)
Eocene (56mya): tarsiers
Paleocene (66mya): wet-nosed primates (e.g., lemurs)
Late Cretaceous (101mya): colugos; tree shrews; rodents and lagomorphs (e.g., rabbits)
Early Cretaceous (145mya): Laurasiatheres (e.g., dogs, seals, pigs, cattle, goats, bats, whales); Afrotheres (e.g., elephants and manatees) and Xenarthrans (e.g., armadillos, anteaters, and sloths)
Period
Jurassic (201mya): marsupials; monotremes (e.g., platypuses)
Triassic (252mya): monotremes
Permian (299mya): monotremes
Carboniferous (359mya): reptiles and birds; amphibians
Devonian (419mya): lungfish; coelacanths; ray-finned fishes (e.g., trout, tuna, eels, etc.)
Silurian (444mya): cartilaginous fishes (e.g., sharks)
Ordovician (485mya): hagfishes and lampreys
Cambrian (541mya): tunicates; lancelets; acorn worms and echinoderms (e.g., starfish)
Ediacaran (635mya): protostomes (e.g., arthropods, mollusks, tardigrades, flatworms, roundworms, earthworms); xenoturbellids ("strange flatworms") and acoelomorphs ("no cavity forms")
Cryogenian (720mya): cnidarians (e.g., jellyfish, corals); placozoans ("flat animals"); comb jellies; sponges
Tonian (1 billion years ago): choanoflagellates ("funnel flagellates").
It starts to get speculative beyond this point.
Stenian (1.2bya): filasteres ("thread stars"); pluriformes (e.g., Corallochytrium "coral reef spores"); ichthyospores ("fish spores")
Ectasian (1.4bya): holomycots (e.g., fungi)
Calymmian (1.6bya): apusomonadids ("footless simple things"); breviates ("brief things"); amoebozoans; CRuMs (e.g., rigifilids "rigid threads"); Malawimonas ("Malawi simple things"); metamonads (e.g., giardia)
Era
Paleoproterozoic (2.5bya): corticates (e.g., plants, red algae, green algae, malaria, ciliates, diatoms, brown algae); eoloukates ("ancient light ones"); percolozoans ("strained through animals"); euglenozoans (e.g., sleeping sickness); archaea
Eon
Archaean (4bya): gram-positive bacteria (staph, strep, anthrax, tuberculosis, leprosy, etc.); Deinococcus ("dreadful granule"); chlamydia, syphilis, Lyme disease, and their close and distant relatives; blue-green algae, chloroplasts, bacterial thermophiles, and their close and distant relatives; cholera, plague, gonorrhea, salmonella, mitochondria, and their close and distant relatives
