A new study applies machine learning to the fossil record to visualise life's history, showing the impacts of major evolutionary events. This shows the long-term evolutionary and ecological impacts of major events of extinction and speciation. Colours represent the geological periods from the Tonian, starting 1 billion years ago, in yellow, to the current Quaternary Period, shown in green. The red to blue colour transition marks the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most disruptive events in the fossil record.