Similarly, cladistics has enabled biologists to explore the interrelationships of other groups of organisms, and some of the implications of this work have been downright provocative. Cladistics tries to identify ' branching points ' where novel characteristics first appear, regarding these evolutionary events as indicative of how and when new groups arise. Thus, for a cladist, identifying branching points is the same thing as tracing genealogy. Character selection seems to be a rather subjective process. In choosing characters most systematists tend to favor their own area of specialty and weigh the significance of these characters more heavily than others.
Cladistics provides systematists with one very handy feature.
Computers can analyze hundreds or thousands of characters in a fraction of the time that a human systematist could. The simplest cladogram that takes into account all the characters entered into it is generally favored, although new evidence suggests that the most parsimonious cladogram is not always the best one. Given differences in the specialties and biases of individual cladists, it is hardly surprising that different characters, weighted differently, would result in different cladograms. But new techniques in comparative morphology, molecular genetics, and refinements in cladistic methods are beginning to produce a fair measure of agreement among the cladograms proposed by various workers. Our popular and scientific conception of sharks has certainly changed radically since Linnaeus' day.