"Natural" Classification of Species as Evidence for Evolution

Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in , biologists began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly, different biologists came up with nearly identical groupings. This means that these groupings are not subjective artifacts of a human need to classify, but that they tell us something real and fundamental about nature. But nobody knew what that something was until Darwin came along, and showed that the nested arrangement of life is precisely what evolution predicts. Creatures with recent common ancestors share many traits, while those whose common ancestors lay in the distant past are more dissimilar. The “natural” classification is itself strong evidence for evolution.

Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution Is True (January 22, 2009)

• evolution
• species
• taxonomy