Misinformation, preconceptions, and the human perception of time (e.g., in seconds, minutes, days, and years) are factors that can contribute to difficulties experienced by students trying to understand evolutionary phenomena on the scale of geological or “deep” time. In addition to other approaches, the use of a simple online species-divergence estimate calculator, “TimeTree: The Timescale of Life,” can add resolution and clarity to big ideas that sometimes stand in the way of students' understanding of the unifying theory in biology, evolution.
