Classification

• Traditionally living things have been classified into groups depending on their structure and characteristics in a system developed by Carl Linnaeus
• Linnaeus classified living things into

  • Kingdom
  • Phylum
  • Class
  • Order
  • Family
  • Genus
  • Species
• King Phillip came over for good soup
• Organisms are named by the binomial system of genus and species
• As evidence of internal structures became more developed due to improvements in microscopes, and the understanding of biochemical processes progressed, new models of classification were proposed
• Due to evidence available from chemical analysis there is now a ‘three domain system’ developed by Carl Woese
• The domains are

  • Archaea (primitive bacteria usually living in extreme environments)
  • Bacteria (true bacteria)
  • Eukaryota (which includes protists, fungi, plants and animals)
• Evolutionary trees are a method used by scientists to show how they believe organisms are related
• Evolutionary trees use current classification data for living organisms and fossil data for extinct organisms