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Caminalcules (from Camin and animalcule) are a fictive group of animal-like life forms invented by Professor Joseph H. Camin (University of Kansas) as a tool for understanding phylogenetics. Interested in how taxonomists group species, he designed these creatures to show an evolutionary pattern of divergence and diversification in morphology. There are 29 recent 'species' of Caminalcules and 48 fossil forms.
The Caminalcules first appeared in print in the journal Systematic Zoology (now Systematic Biology) in 1983, four years after Camin's death in 1979. Robert R. Sokal published four papers, the first showing the full set of Caminalcules and the second using them to compare methods in numerical taxonomy. They have been used in biology education to teach the principles of systematics and evolution.