There are millions of different types of living things on Earth. In order to keep track of them all, scientists put living things into groups based on characteristics that they have that are the same.

This article was originally featured on Undark. For centuries, taxonomists have cataloged every living thing they could find. Expeditions have traveled the globe, searching for unknown species; ...

During a seminar at another institution several years ago, University of Chicago paleontologist David Jablonski fielded a hostile question: Why bother classifying organisms according to their physical ...