Aristotle developed one of the earliest systems of biological classification over 2000 years ago, categorizing organisms as either plants or animals. Animals were further divided based on whether they had red blood and their habitat and physical characteristics. Plants were classified by size and structure. Later, Linnaeus developed the first formal taxonomic system that is still used today, assigning each species a binomial scientific name. His system involved classifying organisms into a nested hierarchy of taxonomic ranks from broadest to most specific, including domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.