"The Plant Evolution Timeline was developed by Nicola Peart and Ben Roberts as part of the UK's Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning project, and created using a modified version of the open software from the MIT SIMILE/Timeplot project. It is a "cut-down version" of a tool used in teaching plant evolution at the University of Cambridge. The plant evolution time line is separated into two panels, an upper panel that plots seven abiotic (one biotic) factors and a lower panel that plots nine biotic factors that can be turned on and off in various combinations against geologic time.

Users can click on the geologic eras and periods, and the panel will zoom in on the plotted data in each panel for that particular time period. When clicking on the geologic era or period, the site also displays an illustration of the continental positions at that time. The Timeline integrates a variety of key information, and this is an excellent teaching graphic to correlate changes in abiotic and biotic factors through time. The simplicity and clarity with which the data are presented also make the site student- and user-friendly and make for a very clean and interactive graphic to use in the classroom. The one drawback of the data being plotted is that it does not present competing interpretations of a particular biotic or abiotic parameter; however, the graphic can be used to initiate these classroom discussions. This is a useful Web site for presenting integrated data to students on evolutionary change through time, and is an excellent instructional resource for teachers of grades 8-12 through upper-level undergraduate courses. Designed to work with Firefox 2.0." - M. S. Zavada, East Tennessee State University, from Choice Online