Question: is the scietific name for a seal lion a taxonomy ??

Paddy Brock answered on 16 Jun 2011:

Yes, taxonomy is the science of classification and the main way in which we classify organisms is by a system of levels: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. A scientific name is the combination of genus and species (you write the genus with a captial letter and the species with a small letter). So the scientific name for the Galapagos sea lion is Zalophus wollebaeki. Zalophus comes from two greek words: lophus which means crest or forehead and Za which is emphasises that it’s big. And wollebaeki is after the scientist who described it first. As a comparison, the scientific name of the California sea lion, which is a different species but in the same genus as the Galapagos sea lion, is Zalophus californianus.