Watch 570 Million Years of Evolution on Earth in 60 Seconds

570 mil­lions years of evo­lu­tion. That’s a lot of ground to cov­er. And it could be like watch­ing paint dry. But not when it flies by in 60 sec­onds, with a groovy sound­track by I‑Konic. First come the arthro­pods. Next some friend­ly fish, all fol­lowed by land plants, fly­ing insects, amphib­ians, and rep­tiles. Way down the line, at the very end, the first humans arrive on the scene. But don’t blink, you might miss it.

To get a lit­tle more detail on how this all hap­pened, I’d sug­gest watch­ing Carl Sagan explain evo­lu­tion in a clas­sic 8‑minute ani­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Web Series Makes the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Easy to Under­stand

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online


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Comments (3)
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  • NIcolas says:

    “The ani­mal we know start to evolve around 570 mil­lions years ago” is quite wrong.

    It is esti­mat­ed that evo­lu­tion start­ed around 3,8 bil­lion years ago…

  • Alex says:

    Well, yeah thats true if you want to tell the sto­ry of evo­lu­tion rather than the evo­lu­tion of mul­ti­cel­lu­lar ani­mals.

    But if they’d made this film your way it would have last­ed around sev­en min­utes instead of just the one and for a whole six min­utes you’d have been star­ing at unchang­ing bac­te­ria. I think most peo­ple would pre­fer this ver­sion!

  • Insectman says:

    “1. Evo­lu­tion was invent­ed by Anax­i­man­der 2,500 years ago as an exten­sion of the Gaea, Moth­er Earth, reli­gion.
    2. The entire uni­verse, viable and non­vi­able alike, has always devolved, the exact oppo­site and exclud­er of evolved.
    3. Every event in this uni­verse is a devo­lu­tion­al event because some of the con­vert­ed ener­gy is lost to future events.
    Biol­o­gy elim­i­nates evo­lu­tion.”
    Dr. Joseph Mas­tropao­lo

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