Abstract
In a book published in 1994,¹ molecular biologist Periannan Senepathy proposed that life was polyphyletic - having many separate lineages with independent origins. Unfortunately, the book contained many errors and strange ideas, and was soundly rejected by the scientific community. However, the issue raised by Senepathy is of considerable interest to creationists: how many independent lineages are there, and how can we distinguish them? Recent advances in molecular genetics may help provide an answer by adding a new potential criterion for identifying independent lineages.