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Article: Classifying species. (Chart Reading Skills).
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- September 3, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Scholastic, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When Joe Slowinski found the Burmese spitting cobra, he suspected it was a new species because it didn't look like other spitting cobras. He studied the snake's scales, jaws, teeth, fangs, and overall appearance, and found that he had indeed stumbled upon an unknown reptile. So Slowinski got naming rights.
While the Burmese spitting cobra is the snake's common name, to name the species scientifically, Slowinski used a classification process. He placed the snake into a series of increasingly specific categories. He first grouped it together with distant relatives, and then its family, and eventually, its species. This science of classification is called Taxonomy. ...