Ultimately, given the assumption that life arose on Earth just once, scientists would like to be able to map out a family tree of organisms, or tree of life, that shows the origin of all species in one mother ancestor at the very top.
The labeling and classification of organisms is called taxonomy. Carolus Linnaeus was one of the first scientists who attempted to organize all the many organisms being discovered at the time into groups of organisms that had clear commonalities. He gave each type of organism a two-part name consisting of its genus and its species. A species was defined as a group of organisms that regularly breeds together or has characteristics distinct from those of other groups.
The genus was defined as a closely related group of species such as humans or Homo sapiens and other (now extinct) species of beings that walked upright and frequently used tools. So, the scientific name that Carolus Linnaeus gave organisms went from a more general classification to the more specific classification. Linnaeus also said that all types of organisms should be given a unique genus and species name. So, for example, while there are other members of the Homo genus and while there may be sapiens in other genera (plural of genus), humans are the only Homo sapiens. This system of naming organisms in two-parts is called binomial taxonomy.
Phylogeny
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