A new research from the University of British Columbia used massive DNA sequencing and big data analysis to create the first evolutionary tree encompassing a large fraction of Earth's bacteria over the past billion years. The results contradict widely held scientific thinking that microbe taxa because of their very large populations rarely die off. Bacteria rarely fossilize so we know very little about how the microbial landscape has evolved over time. Sequencing and math helped us fill in the bacterial family tree map how they've diversified over time and uncover their extinctions. While modern bacterial diversity is undoubtedly high it's