Phylogeny traces the history of life on Earth through the study of how animals and plants have developed over time and how they are related to one another. It is similar to taxonomy—the science of classifying organisms based on their structure and functions. Taxonomists create family trees of living and extinct species to discover the origins and lines of descent of various forms of life. Very few family trees are complete to their fossil origins, however, because of gaps in the fossil record. The first system of classification was devised by the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaeus classified life-forms based on their appearance; the more they resembled each other in size, shape, and form, he believed, the more closely they were related.
Zaloguj się, aby uzyskać dostęp do pełnego tekstu.
