Bringing evolution into zoological parks through timetrees

Zoological parks provide one of the public's earliest and most frequent encounters with biodiversity, making them a natural setting for introducing evolution to the general public. Timetrees are particularly well suited to this purpose because they link the diversity of living animals to the history of life on Earth, but zoos rarely make this connection. Here, we present a new phylogeny and an associated open web resource that fill this gap (https://www.timetree.org/zootree). Using an intuitive interface, users can create educational outreach materials custom-tailored to the zoo collection of their choice. The timetree of zoo mammals will, therefore, offer the general public an opportunity to understand evolution through the lens of charismatic animal ambassadors.