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Organizing Life on Earth

17 November, 2015 - 10:45

Scientists continually obtain new information that helps to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Each group of organisms went through its own evolutionary journey, called its phylogeny. Each organism shares relatedness with others, and based on morphologic and genetic evidence scientists attempt to map the evolutionary pathways of all life on Earth. Historically, organisms were organized into a taxonomic classification system. However, today many scientists build phylogenetic trees to illustrate evolutionary relationships and the taxonomic classification system is expected to reflect evolutionary relationships.