ladder of nature became an elevator

An example of metaphor used in writing about science:

"In the eighteenth century, evolutionary theories built on the progressive narrative of the German Idealists. Reimagining the Neopolatonic hierarchy as a movement from simple to complex, biologists began to make sense of evidence that species have changed through time (e.g., fossils). The scala naturae, or ladder of nature, became an elevator."

Lucas John Mix (2018) Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin. On vegetable souls. Cham, Switzerland: palgrave macmillan.

As the ladder of nature (also known as the great chain of being) was already a metaphor, this might be seen as an extended metaphor.