Editing Evolutionary taxonomy (section)

==Origin of evolutionary taxonomy==
[[File:Lamarck 1815 diagram of animal evolution.png|thumb|[[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck]]'s 1815 diagram showing branching in the course of invertebrate evolution]]
Evolutionary taxonomy arose as a result of the influence of the theory of [[evolution]] on [[Linnaean taxonomy]]. The idea of translating Linnaean taxonomy into a sort of [[dendrogram]] of the [[Animal]] and [[Plant]] [[Kingdom (biology)|kingdoms]] was formulated toward the end of the 18th century, well before [[Charles Darwin]]'s book ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'' was published.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Archibald | first1 = J. David | year = 2009 | title = Edward Hitchcock's Pre-Darwinian (1840) 'Tree of Life' | url = http://www.bio.sdsu.edu/faculty/archibald.html/Archibald09JHB42p561.pdf | journal = Journal of the History of Biology | volume = 42 | issue = 3| pages = 561–592 |doi=10.1007/s10739-008-9163-y | pmid=20027787| citeseerx = 10.1.1.688.7842 | s2cid = 16634677 }}</ref> The first to suggest that organisms had [[common descent]] was [[Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis]] in his 1751 ''Essai de Cosmologie'',<ref name="bromley">J. S. Bromley, [https://books.google.com/books?id=OOgzAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA62 The new Cambridge modern history: The rise of Great Britain and Russia, 1688-1715/25], CUP Archive, 1970, {{ISBN|978-0-521-07524-4}}, pgs. 62-63.</ref><ref>Geoffrey Russell Richards Treasure, [https://books.google.com/books?id=C94OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA142 The making of modern Europe, 1648-1780], Taylor & Francis, 1985, {{ISBN|978-0-416-72370-0}}, pg. 142</ref> [[Transmutation of species]] entered wider scientific circles with [[Erasmus Darwin]]'s 1796 [[Zoonomia|Zoönomia]] and [[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck]]'s 1809 ''[[Philosophie Zoologique]]''.<ref name=C-S>{{cite journal|last=Cavalier-Smith|first=Thomas|title=Deep phylogeny, ancestral groups and the four ages of life|journal=[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B]] |year=2010|volume=365|issue=1537|pages=111–132|url=http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/EvSy/PDF/Cavalier-Smith-deepPhylogeny2010.pdf|doi=10.1098/rstb.2009.0161|pmid=20008390|pmc=2842702}}</ref> The idea was popularised in the [[English-speaking world]] by the speculative but widely read ''[[Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation]]'', published anonymously by [[Robert Chambers (journalist)|Robert Chambers]] in 1844.<ref>{{Citation
 |surname      = Secord
 |given        = James A.
 |author-link  = James A. Secord
 |year         = 2000
 |title        = Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
 |publisher    = Chicago: University of Chicago Press
 |url          = http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14098.ctl
 |isbn         = 978-0-226-74410-0
 |access-date  = 17 January 2011
 |archive-date = 16 May 2008
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20080516224806/http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14098.ctl
 |url-status   = dead
}}</ref>

Following the appearance of ''On the Origin of Species'', [[Tree of life (biology)|Tree of Life]] representations became popular in scientific works. In ''On the Origin of Species'', the ancestor remained largely a hypothetical species; Darwin was primarily occupied with showing the principle, carefully refraining from speculating on relationships between living or fossil organisms and using theoretical examples only.<ref name=C-S/> In contrast, Chambers had proposed specific hypotheses, the evolution of placental mammals from marsupials, for example.<ref>{{cite book |title=Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation |last=Chambers |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Chambers (journalist) |year=1844 |publisher=John Churchill |location=London |page=122|url=https://archive.org/stream/vestigesofnatura00unse#page/n3/mode/2up|access-date=10 May 2013}}</ref>

Following Darwin's publication, [[Thomas Henry Huxley]] used the fossils of ''[[Archaeopteryx]]'' and ''[[Hesperornis]]'' to argue that the [[bird]]s are descendants of the dinosaurs.<ref>Huxley, T.H. (1876): Lectures on Evolution. ''New York Tribune''. Extra. no 36. In Collected Essays IV: pp 46-138 [http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE4/LecEvol.html original text w/ figures]</ref> Thus, a group of [[extant taxon|extant]] animals could be tied to a fossil group. The resulting description, that of dinosaurs "giving rise to" or being "the ancestors of" birds, exhibits the essential hallmark of evolutionary taxonomic thinking.

The past three decades have seen a dramatic increase in the use of DNA sequences for reconstructing phylogeny and a parallel shift in emphasis from evolutionary taxonomy towards Hennig's 'phylogenetic systematics'.<ref name=C-S/>

Today, with the advent of modern [[genomics]], scientists in every branch of biology make use of [[molecular phylogeny]] to guide their research. One common method is [[multiple sequence alignment]].{{cn|date=June 2024}}

[[Thomas Cavalier-Smith]],<ref name=C-S/> [[G. G. Simpson]] and [[Ernst Mayr]]<ref>Mahner, Martin; Bunge, Mario. ''Foundations of Biophilosophy''. Springer, p. 251.</ref> are some representative evolutionary taxonomists.