The History of Life

The Extinction Files
This BBC's educational web site includes overviews of the major mass extinctions and proposed causes.

A Feeling for the Fossil Record: An Interview with Geerat Vermeij
A fascinating discussion with paleobiologist Geerat Vermeij about arms races, extinction, biodiversity, and his work with mollusks.

Lessons in the Diversity and Evolution of Eukaryotes
An essay on the evolution of eukaryotes by Scott Dawson.

The Paleontology Portal
This site explores the paleontological history of the United States by time and state.

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
This section of the Talk.Origins website describes an impressive array of transitional vertebrate species known from the fossil record.

The Tree of Life
This University of Arizona site contains information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their histories, and their relationships to one another.

The Evolution of Primate Intelligence
Scott Rifkin explores the origin of intelligence in us and our relatives.

The Hall of Human Ancestors
This site provides QuickTime Virtual Reality movies of fossil skulls in the Smithsonian's collection.

Handprint: Ancestral Lines
Linked from this page are documents summarizing the hominid fossil record and hypothesized lines of human evolution from 5 million years ago to the present.

Human Evolution: The Fossil Evidence in 3D
University of California Santa Barbara's online 3D gallery of skulls of modern primate relatives and fossil ancestors of humans (extremely cool).

Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution
This section of the Talk.Origins web site summarizes the current scientific thinking about human evolution and presents the fossil evidence and an illustrated timeline.