• 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    usually, in biology we use monophyletic groupings, like all descendants of rodents will always be rodents.

    however, those terms “lizard/fish” are not monophyletic, because otherwise all vertebrates would be fish. those are paraphyletic (group includes some descendants of a common ancestors).

    there are already polyphyletic, where we have descendants of multiple sources, ie, Herbivores would be polyphyletic.