Carolus Linnaeus developed the binomial nomenclature system of naming organisms. The scientific name for organisms has two parts: the genus, or generic epithet, and the species, or specific epithet. For example, the scientific name for a mountain lion or cougar is Felis concolor. The name helps you know what group the organism came from.

Linnaeus organized species into taxa that formed a hierarchy or set of ordered ranks. Linnaeus's original system had only four levels, but over time his classification system expanded into eight hierarchical taxa: species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain.

Watch the following video and learn more about taxonomic hierarchy.

Look at the diagram below. It shows the taxonomic hierarchy of the lion starting from kingdom to species.

Source: Domain Eukaryota, Windows to the Universe