Three truths
- Timed
- Began about 540 million years ago · the last 13% of life's story
- Named
- ≈1.1 million named living species · 62% of all named
- Weighed
- ≈1 Gt C · 0.2% of all life's carbon
Eukaryotes · animals · phylum
Arthropods
Arthropoda
Living · roughly 1.1 million described species
Animals with jointed legs and a hard outer skeleton, including insects, spiders and crustaceans. They are the most species-rich animal phylum.
Key characteristics
- Jointed limbs
- Exoskeleton they shed to grow
- Segmented bodies
- Branched off
- About 580 million years ago (approximate)
- Parent lineage
- Moulting animals
Child lineages
Classification
Sources
- Arthropod (Wikipedia) · Wikipedia
- TimeTree: the timescale of life · TimeTree
- Open Tree of Life · Open Tree of Life
- Tree of Life Web Project · Tree of Life Web Project