What were you?
This time machine shows 19 stops back in time for your lineage and your atoms: the first humans, small mammals living with dinosaurs, the fish that came ashore, the first cell, the stars and the Big Bang.
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Today
You
About 30 trillion cells and 7 × 10²⁷ atoms. Every stop below is linked to you by an unbroken chain: not a single link ever broke.
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Today
You
About 30 trillion cells and 7 × 10²⁷ atoms. Every stop below is linked to you by an unbroken chain: not a single link ever broke.
300,000 years ago
The first Homo sapiens
Our ancestors in Africa, with faces very much like ours. About 12,000 generations separate you from them.
1.9 million years ago
Homo erectus
A long-legged, strong-walking human species that made stone tools and, over time, learned to use fire. Either our direct ancestor or a very close relative of it.
3.2 million years ago
Australopithecus (Lucy)
A relative of ours who walked on two legs but had a chimpanzee-sized brain. Lucy stood about 1.1 metres tall.
6–7 million years ago
Common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
Neither human nor chimpanzee, but the great-great-grandmother of both. Chimpanzees are our cousins, not our ancestors.
About 30 million years ago
Our common ancestor with monkeys
The common ancestor of apes (you, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans) and Old World monkeys. A tree-dwelling, fruit-eating primate.
55 million years ago
Early primates
Small tree-dwellers with grasping hands and forward-facing eyes. Your thumb is their legacy.
66 million years ago
A small mammal that survived the asteroid
When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs struck, your ancestor was a mouse-sized mammal. Being small, eating little and being able to hide helped it survive.
200 million years ago
The first mammals
Small, furry creatures, probably active at night, living at the dinosaurs' feet. Feeding young with milk goes back to them.
310 million years ago
Our common ancestor with dinosaurs
Lizard-like animals, the first that could lay eggs on land (amniotes). Their line split in two: one branch led to mammals and you, the other to reptiles, dinosaurs and birds. So where did dinosaurs come from? From the same place you did.
375 million years ago
The fish that came ashore
A Tiktaalik-like fish with fleshy fins that could prop itself up in shallow water. The plan of the bones in your arm began in these fins.
520 million years ago
The first vertebrates
Jawless, fish-like creatures a few centimetres long. Your backbone and skull come from these ancestors.
555 million years ago
Early worm-like animals
Among the first animals with a front, a back, a left and a right, about the size of a grain of rice. Your left and right mirror each other because you descend from them.
About 2–1.6 billion years ago
The first complex cell
A single cell that housed a bacterium inside it (today's mitochondrion). The mitochondria descended from it are still working in every cell of your body.
At least 3.5 billion years ago
The first cells
The common ancestor of all life: a simple, self-copying cell wrapped in a membrane. You, an oak tree and a bacterium all descend from it.
4.54 billion years ago
Rock, water and gas
You were not yet alive. Your atoms were scattered through the young Earth's lava, its first oceans and its air.
4.6 billion years ago
The cloud that made the Sun
Your atoms drifted inside a vast collapsing cloud of gas and dust, the raw material of the Sun and planets.
Before the Sun
Inside dying stars
Your carbon, oxygen, calcium and iron were forged inside stars that lived and exploded before the Sun, and were scattered into space.
13.8 billion years ago
The Big Bang
Your hydrogen nuclei, protons, formed in the universe's first second. About 60% of the atoms in your body are hydrogen: most of your atoms are as old as the universe.
Frequently asked questions
Did humans come from monkeys?
We did not come from today's monkeys or apes; we share common ancestors with them. The human and chimpanzee lineages split from a common ancestor about 6–7 million years ago. The chimpanzee is our cousin, not our ancestor.
Where did dinosaurs come from?
Dinosaurs evolved about 230 million years ago from small, two-legged runners in a reptile group called archosaurs. The Great Dying about 252 million years ago had wiped out many groups, and archosaurs spread into the emptied world. Go back further and the ancestors of dinosaurs and of you were the same animal about 310 million years ago. The dinosaurs' closest living relatives are crocodiles, and their living descendants are birds.
Did humans live alongside dinosaurs?
No. The non-bird dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, while Homo sapiens appeared about 300,000 years ago, more than 65 million years later. But our ancestors, small mammals, did live alongside the dinosaurs.
Where did the atoms in our bodies come from?
Hydrogen comes from the Big Bang; elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium and iron come from inside stars and their explosions. That is why “we are stardust” is not a metaphor but literally true.