Also known as phylogenetics; an attempt to organise life into a tree-like data structure. The 'root' is rather complicated, since life emerged from more of a soup than a single creature. This task is complicated by the difficulty of selecting the 'correct' (actual, historical) tree from the forest of similar trees. It is a much more rigorous process if done with molecular data (protein sequence) rather than anatomical information. However, disagreement over molecular evolution models (Shimomura's neutral drift theory, for example) could give different results.

See: Clusters of Orthologous Groups.

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