By: Goran Runfeldt
The Match Time Tree is a genealogy report for FamilyTreeDNA Big Y customers that shows a genetic family tree of your direct paternal lineage compared with those of your Y-DNA matches who have taken the Big Y test.
Organized on a time scale, the tree illustrates how you and your matches are related through your direct male lines of descent, based 100% on genetics. This removes the guesswork for understanding your Y-DNA connections.
The Time Tree is typically updated weekly with new branches and refined age estimates, so check back often to see the latest discoveries about your paternal origins!
Introduction
Following the recent release of the Classic Tree, we have now added a personal Match Time Tree, which complements the public Time Tree and the Group Time Tree. Just like the Group Time Tree shows a Group Project’s Big Y-tested members organized on the Time Tree, the new Match Time Tree shows your Big Y-tested Y-DNA matches on your personal Time Tree, restricted to the relevant branches. This new feature is only available to Big Y testers.
There is a lot of interesting content on the Discover reports, such as the for-fun Notable Connections and the prehistoric Ancient Connections that provide fun and interesting facts about deep ancestral connections on your paternal line. However, the DNA matches with other present-day customers and genealogists that can help you confirm or reject theories, break through brick walls, and uncover another piece of your ancestral puzzle, is at the heart of the Big Y test and what most FamilyTreeDNA users and Big Y testers are looking for.
How to find your Match Time Tree
If you have taken the Big Y test with FamilyTreeDNA, you will have a link to the Discover Haplogroup Reports on your dashboard after you sign in to your account.
You will find the new Match Time Tree option in the menu on your Discover Haplogroup Report.
The Match Time Tree Report
The new report shows your Y-DNA matches who have taken the Big Y test arranged on the Time Tree so you can see how you and your matches are genetically related in genealogical and pre-genealogical times on the great Tree of Humankind.
For a Y-DNA match to show on your Match Time Tree, they must match you at the Y-37, Y-67, Y-111, or Big Y test levels and have a completed Big Y result. Check out this video demo of the new Match Time Tree.
Everyone’s Match Time Tree will naturally differ depending on how many matches you have, which can vary greatly. There are Big Y testers from large clans, tribes, or families with hundreds or even thousands of Big Y-tested patrilineal relatives within the last few thousand years, and there are those rare unicorns who do not yet have any matches.
The message above shows if you do not yet have any Y-DNA matches with Big Y testers. Even though Sherman doesn’t currently have any Big Y matches, he is fortunate to have a connection to a historical individual from South Carolina.
The new Share Mode is a welcome addition for those of us who like to share screenshots with friends and fellow genealogists. To protect the details of your matches, use it when taking a screenshot for sharing with a broader group. (Of course, always use common sense when sharing details about your matches, even when Share Mode is enabled)
You can navigate up and down your part of the Haplotree by clicking the haplogroup icons, going as far back as you have Big Y-tested Y-DNA matches.
Here is a screenshot of my close family, including four Big Y-tested descendants of my great-great-grandfather, born in the 1800s.
Click on a match to show detailed information and estimates of when your shared ancestor lived based on FamilyTreeDNA’s state-of-the-art TMRCA (time to most recent common ancestor) estimation algorithm. Fun fact: Steve, shown above, is the long-lost American cousin who was the first to tell me about National Geographic’s Genographic Project and FamilyTreeDNA, which put me on a path to eventually move to Houston and work at FamilyTreeDNA.
Ancient Connections are hidden by default, as the Match Time Tree focuses on your present-day matches. If you have some closer ancient connections, a small notification will show they can be displayed.
If any of your matches have recently been assigned a new Y-DNA haplogroup that is not yet available in the Discover Haplogroup Reports, the Pending Matches panel will open and indicate which matches are temporarily excluded from the Match Time Tree. The Discover reports typically update at the end of each week, so if you see a pending match, check back again the following weekend.
Frequently asked questions
Q: I have some very distant matches with dotted lines. What does that mean?
A: The Match Time Tree includes other Big Y testers who match you on the Big Y test or the higher (Y-37, Y-67, or Y-111) Y-STR test levels. Due to convergence, you can sometimes match a very distant person, typically on the Y-37 test level. The Match Time Tree shows which matches are very distant and which are closer so that you can focus your research accordingly.
The dotted lines indicate that there are other intermediate branches that are not shown. We collapse intermediate branches where you do not have any matches, as they would otherwise clutter the view.
What’s next?
As hinted with the “Coming Soon” label on the Family Tree display option, links to family trees of your matches will be added a little later.
We hope this new genealogy feature, added to your Discover Haplogroup Reports, will help your research and save you time by aggregating the match information and the ever-growing Haplotree in one place. Please let us know what you think in the comments below!
If you have not yet upgraded to the Big Y-700 on any of your paternal lines, now is a great time with the Summer Sale in full force.
About the Author
Goran Runfeldt
Head of Research and Development
Goran is a genetic genealogist with a technology background. He is a driver behind many FamilyTreeDNA tools & features including the Block Tree and the Discover platform & Y-DNA reports. He is also a mitochondrialist in the Million Mito Project.