The Tree of Life: Part 3

The tree of life, as scientists understand it, is not static – it changes. Classification systems have changed with science’s understandings of the diversity and organization of the living world, so don’t think that we know it all! Prior to the 1970s, scientists generally classified living things as Bacteria or Eucarya. The scientific community was […]

Eucarya

A eukaryote is an organism whose cells are organized into complex structures enclosed within membranes. Many living organisms we are familiar with, including all animals, plants, and fungi, are eukaryotes. The defining membrane-bound structure that differentiates eukaryotic cells from other types of cells is the nucleus. Cells without a nucleus are called prokaryotic cells, and […]