page_title: Cladistics
section_title: Examples
hierarchical_section_title: Cladistics / Examples
caption_attribution_description: English: Hypothetical cladogram showing two clades (red and blue) and a grade (green).
context_page_description: Cladistics is the method of classifying organisms into groups called clades.
  A clade is a group of organisms with a common ancestor and all its descendants. Such a clade is monophyletic. The term 'clade' was coined by English biologist Julian Huxley.
context_section_description: Birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all other descendants (living or extinct) of their most recent common ancestor form a clade. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single branch on the tree of life, a monophyletic group. Biological classification needs such a natural group of organisms to be put together and given a taxonomic name.
  This brings classification in line with phylogeny (how living things evolved). In cladistics, clades are the only acceptable units.
  Some versions of cladistics have been the subject of controversy.ᵖ²²⁶
caption: Cladogram (family tree) of a biological group. The red and blue boxes represent clades, i.e. complete branches. The green box is not a clade, but rather represent an evolutionary grade, an incomplete group: the blue clade descends from the same ancestor but is not included in it.
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