Biologists and geneticists have enlisted folks from companies like Google and Adobe to figure out a way to display the massive amount of evolutionary data in a way that allows a mere human to make sense out of it, according to this NY Times story. The Daily Galaxy also mentioned the article, as did Discover Magazine and quite a few others. This is one field where the data and evidence is overwhelming, in the literal sense; there is so much of it, it is difficult to visualize the patterns it creates. The first steps have been taken, with the open source PhyloWidget, which you can use online or download to run locally. I am looking forward to seeing how this one develops; achieving the full project as envisioned will be even more impressive than Google Earth, another massive collection of data rendered into something useful.
