Nonetheless, many current discussions of evolution, especially in the general media, retain vestiges of the ladder view. This is often betrayed by the perception that some organisms are "advanced ...

As Gould wrote in his classic book Wonderful Life: “Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress”.

To this extent, according to this logic, evolution should look like either A) A ladder, with the first species resting at the bottom and subsequent, more complex, more evolved species climbing ...

Hence we continually make errors inspired by unconscious allegiance to the ladder of ... to the heart of evolution, that "life changes over time", yet this overly generalized view of evolution ...

What do phylogenetic trees illustrate? These diagrams don't just organize knowledge of biodiversity - they also show us that living species are the summation of their evolutionary history.

It has been assumed that the intelligence of animals on various rungs of the evolutionary ladder differs only in degree. New experiments on animals from fish to monkey show that the differences ...