Mythological species evolutionary tree?
Yes, huge wall of text, I will leave a TLDR at the end for your to scroll to if you're too busy.
I'm working on a game around world history and world mythologies that categorizes mythological creatures based on their component creatures (e.g. a centaur is considered a human and a horse). Im going about it this way because I believe this allows different cultures to stand on their own while letting the player draw comparisons. Like eastern and Western dragons are very different in terms of design, ability, morality, and intelligence but get lumped together under the same umbrella of "dragon". And dont even get me started on the drake vs. Wyvern vs. Dragon vs. Wyrm debate when ancient societies didn't distinguish them so cleanly, if at all. Mainly I'd like to avoid having 100 different types of monster clades because then I'd have to a) draw an arbitrary line as to what a monster clade is and what is a one-off or like handful or cards under that distinction and b) I'd have to support all of those different clades.
I also wanted to approach it in a quasi-scientific way with Major Clades and Minor Clades (since dividing at the, say, Order and Genus levels didn't provide the level of diversity that I wanted for the game and gives me a lot of flexibility game-design-wise). Of course real-life organisms dont have hybrid species from across entirely different Orders (or higher) so that's why I say "quasi-scientific".
I especially run into issues with the humanoid races. Like are humans, elves, trolls, fairies, goblins, and dwarves all related? Im aware that they have different mythological origins (e.g. I believe I read that dwarves were primordial maggots feasting on the corpse of Ymir and were given a more human appearance) but I dont want to categorize dwarves as an insect, Id like to keep them human-adjacent (although no hate if you want to for your game or story, thats just not what Im setting out to do here).
With all that being said, are there any good existing mythological species evolutionary trees that people have made that would be good research to start with?
TLDR: working on establishing a taxonomy for mythological species using large, broad categories without oversimplifying. Especially for humanoid races. Interbreeding between clades is not only allowed but expected. Looking for advice and research materials for other related projects.
Thanks in advance!