If I’m not mistaken, a lot of the relationships between different organisms (tree of life) were first established in the 19th century and were done so by looking at similarities in form and function and is the basis for scientific names. Since the development of genetic analysis, has there been an effort to go back and confirm that these educated guesses were correct? If so, were there any huge surprises? Like learning that animals that were thought to be closely related based on how they look are actually much more distant
In: Biology
Yes. Modern taxonomy is mostly based on molecular biology and genetic similarity, not form and function, and has indeed revealed that many of the original groups weren’t descendants of common ancestors after all. Of course, form isn’t a *complete* coincidence, so a lot of this took the form of small adjustments moreso than totally remaking the taxonomy.
Probably the biggest exception to this rule is birds not being relatives of dinosaurs as originally thought, but just being, well, dinosaurs.
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