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Thank you so much for the link!

Right off the bat, the website confirmed what I believed to be true (emphasis mine):

Systematics, then, is the study of the pattern of relationships among taxa; it is no less than understanding the history of all life. But history is not something we can see. It has happened once and leaves only clues as to the actual events. Biologists in general and systematists in particular use these clues to build hypotheses or models of the history.

I continued on to the "Methodology of a Cladistic Analysis" and found nothing on genetics, but I did click on the "evolutionary tree" definition which again confirmed what I believed to be true (emphasis mine):

evolutionary tree -- A diagram which depicts the hypothetical phylogeny of the taxa under consideration. The points at which lineages split represent ancestor taxa to the descendant taxa appearing at the terminal points of the cladogram.

I then clicked into the topical index --- to continue my search to answer "in detail how genetic information for long extinct species can be deduced using genetic information from living species"

I didn't find anything at the Berkley site to answer my question, so I clicked on a link they provided to the "Natural History of Genes."

That took me to a Utah website. Genetic Science Learning Center- University of Utah

The home page was generalized, so I searched on "evolution" and found some information:

Homeotic Gene Organization Is Conserved Through Evolution

The presence of homeotic gene sequences in animals as different as insects and mammals suggests that this type of gene has a crucial function in many, and perhaps all, animals.

Again, that confirmed what I believed to be true (from the onset I've suggested that 25% of all creatures, and perhaps around 50% of animals are made from the same stuff, genetically.) Not bad for a layperson (LOL!)

Mutations In Mammalian Homeotic Genes

Homeotic Mutations Could Be Involved In Evolutionary Change

Both of these articles are very interesting hypotheses that homeotic gene mutations could be the cause for change in body shape (and presumably, new body plans or phyla.)

So far, all the information is quite interesting but has not elevated the value of 99.98% of the evolutionary tree from being a hypotheses, nor has it shown "in detail how genetic information for long extinct species can be deduced using genetic information from living species".

So again I am left with an evolutionary tree where 99.98% of it is hypothetical and only the very top .02% can be confirmed by genetics. It still looks like a "lawn" or "periwinkle" or "onion skin" to me.

It seems to me if the geneticists can project the DNA of a long extinct creature, they could also actualize it to see if they were correct. Of course, that still doesn't "connect the dots" to the next one, but given enough time and a controlled environment perhaps they could provoke a natural mutation.

The investigation did however raise another question in my mind. If homeotic gene mutuations are responsible for the body plans and diversification --- then why haven't there been any new animal phyla (body plans) since the Cambrian explosion which began about 530 million years and last only, what, 50 million years? It seems presumptuous that the surviving 30 or so body plans exhausts the entire universe of viable body plans.

Do you have any more links that would help with my original question?

Do you have any more links that would help with my original question?

I don't really enjoy this flitting about from subject to subject when we haven't yet progressed beyond some very simple ideas.

The 25% match quote you pasted earlier refers to individual bases, not sequence. Dr. Stochastic and I both pointed this out to you independently on this thread. Living organisms share individual nucleotides or carbon or water. We are all related. Just for analogy, suppose you call a claim of mine only a hypothesis. You then do a web search on the word 'hypothesis' and return with a number of hits, all of them unrelated to my claim and say "Just as I thought, your claim is only a hypothesis!".

To get an idea of the relationship between organisms or species, we look at sequence not at individual bases or atoms. Does that make sense?