The Open University

Darwin’s Tree of Life – see how living things are related

Tree of Life is a collaborative project by Wellcome Trust, BBC, and The Open University. It was aired on BBC1 in early 2009 as part of BBC’s Darwin season. It serves as homage to Charles Darwin, whose 200th birth anniversary falls in 2009. In Darwin's “On the Origin of Species,” he used the term 'tree of life' to describe the evolutionary relationships between all living things on Earth. The collaborators intended to produce an updated version of the Tree of Life, created by Shadow Industries. Sir David Attenborough narrates this six and a half minute video, which invites you to “see how living things are related.”