The careful reader of this issue will come across a picture that, at first sight, has a startling message. Those impatient to see it should turn to the report from Rokas et al. (A. Rokas, B. L. Williams, N. King & S. B. Carroll Nature 425, 798-804; 2003). The authors' Fig. 4, on page 801, is the object of interest. What, you might ask yourself, is so remarkable about a phylogeny ― an evolutionary tree ― of seven species of yeast of the genus Saccharomyces? Closer inspection, however, will show that the authors are making an unprecedented claim: that this is a fully resolved phylogeny with five internal branches in the tree, each of which has unequivocal support from all the data. For years biologists have tried to find methods to tease evolutionary history from obtuse data. This looks like the best attempt yet.
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