The Monophyletic Taxon
The Monophyletic taxon,
also called a clade, is the
building block of the cladistic system of
taxonomy. It refers to any group of organisms that includes the most
recent common ancestor of all those organisms and all the descendants of
that common ancestor.
Examples: Insects,
Vertebrates, Mammalia,
Angiosperms, , etc.
graphic (above) from 
Systematics page
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page history
page uploaded 13 November 1998
modified 28 November
and again 18 December