They sure as hell sold it that way.
>> They sure as hell sold it that way. <<
Don’t blame biologists for the grotesque simplifications of school teachers and journalists ... but seriously, I’ve seen variants of “the Tree of Life” in just about biology text book I’ve ever seen, even dinosaur books, etc. But it was almost always used to illustrate phylogenies, and to show when groups of animals existed. It’s hard to make the case that it was offered as proof when almost all of the stems were dotted lines with question marks along side them. If anything, they were a good illustration of how much remained unknown, lest a student otherwise get the impression that “missing links” existed.
The reason they fell into some disfavor was that the phylogenic relationships (which had been based largely on gross anatomy) seemed incompatible with DNA.
I’m concerned that what’s really going on here is that a lot of interesting questions, poised by the incompatibility of the phylogenic Tree of Life and genetic relations, are about to get swept under the rug... and no-one ever will feel the need to explain why birds, which look to gross anatomists so much like dinosaurs, have DNA much more similar to frogs.