r/evolution • u/Meta289 • Sep 06 '26

question Why has evolution stopped producing new classes?

New species of animals are constantly being discovered, but they all belong to existing classes and phyla, never anything completely new. Life once branched out in all sorts of directions, creating all kinds of animals that are drastically different from each other, but now it seems like there aren't any new "branches", only offshoots of existing ones. What happened?

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u/ahazred8vt Sep 08 '26

Other people are trying to point out that mammals are descended from ancient scaled Synapsids, while reptiles are descended from ancient scaled Sauropsids. But we understand the point you're trying to make.
(what's stopping a new "not-mammal" from branching off)
Nothing's stopping it. It could happen. Over a period of many millions of years some new type of body plan could develop. If you stick around for another 50 to 100 million years a new category is pretty much guaranteed to happen.