 If one way to think about the larger picture of the history of life on Earth is to focus on evolutionary trends (size increase, complexity increase, etc.), another approach is to focus on major transitional events in the history of life (Maynard Smith &amp; Szathmáry 1995; Szathmáry &amp; Maynard Smith 1995). The point of departure for most work on major transitions has been Szathmáry and Maynard Smith’s (1995: 228) list of game-changing alterations in evolutionary history: