Class (biology)

[1] The class as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name – and not just called an top-level genus (genus summum) – was first introduced by French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in the classification of plants that appeared in his Eléments de botanique of 1694.

Insofar as a general definition of a class is available, it has historically been conceived as embracing taxa that combine a distinct grade of organization—i.e.

In the first edition of his Systema Naturae (1735),[3] Carl Linnaeus divided all three of his kingdoms of nature (minerals, plants, and animals) into classes.

Where formal ranks have been assigned, the ranks have been reduced to a very much lower level, e.g. class Equisitopsida for the land plants, with the major divisions within the class assigned to subclasses and superorders.

[4] The class was considered the highest level of the taxonomic hierarchy until George Cuvier's embranchements, first called Phyla by Ernst Haeckel,[5] were introduced in the early nineteenth century.