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| | Ask E.T.: Evidence and assumptions in cladograms (and other tree diagrams) |
 | | Thus a tree diagram intended to summarize body shape might link sharks, whales and icthyosaurs, although they are, respectively, fish, mammals, and reptiles, and not especially close in terms of common ancestry. |
 | | Among the aspects of evolutionary history that we may wish to represent in a diagram are the relative sequence of splitting of lineages (cladogenesis), the amount and kinds of morphological or genetic changes occurring within lineages (anagenesis), the absolute (as opposed to relative) timing of events (absolute chronology), and the geographic distribution of the organisms. |
 | | By "trees of history" I mean all manner of genealogical diagrams that depict "descent with modification." The three principal disciplines that reconstruct trees of history are biological systematics, historical linguistics, and stemmatics (the study of text transmission). |
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