Fetus' Feet Show Fish, Reptile Vestiges

Discovery News ^ | May 18, 2006 | Jennifer Viegas

[Seamoth]

It's pretty sad that some people have been indoctrinated to the point where any observations in ontogeny is immediately connected to Haeckel and thus a "fraud".

[Dallas59]

[Moonman62]

Most of us probably used one of those textbooks when we were children. They have long been proven to be complete lies.

Where have they been proven lies? I've seen the claim many times here on FR, but never been shown the evidence.

[swmobuffalo]

Right. And you can look at human fetuses and chicken embryos and at a certain early stage they look just alike. That should mean we came from chickens?

[PistolPaknMama]

a new study finds

Just how new is this study? I'm sure I read about this 20 years ago.

Also when human babies are born they all look like E.T., so maybe this validates the scientology crowd's beliefs too.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Also when human babies are born they all look like E.T...."

They do? Can you provide any pictures to validate this claim? I have never sen a baby that looked anything like ET.

[Junior]

Utter nonsense.

So you say. And yet, you have absolutely nothing to back up your contention. Go figure.

[Seamoth]

James Carville's baby photo...

[madprof98]

The effort to prove that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" goes back over a 100 years, and it is replete with fraud. Many posters already say that they recall the famous drawings they saw in biology texts many years ago, drawings by a scientist named Haeckel who admitted in his own lifetime that he had doctored them up. This is from New Scientist:

A SET of 19th-century drawings that still appear in reference books such as Gray's Anatomy are badly misdrawn, says an embryologist in Britain.

German naturalist Ernst Haeckel published the drawings 123 years ago in support of his famous dictum "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". They appear to demonstrate that the young embryos of fish, birds and humans look nearly the same. "He's shown the similarity, but he hasn't shown the differences," says Michael Richardson of St George's Hospital Medical School in London.

Richardson and his colleagues compared the embryos of 50 vertebrates to Haeckel's drawings. They say in Anatomy and Embryology (vol 196, p 91) that Haeckel left out some features, such as the budding limbs that some embryos have, while adding others, such as an excess of vertebra-like "somites".

Although Haeckel confessed to drawing from memory and was convicted of fraud at the University of Jena, the drawings persist. "That's the real mystery," says Richardson.

[ocean]

I cracked open a chicken egg this morning and found a bright orange sphere. Obviously chickens evolved from oranges.

[VadeRetro]

You really don't make a current study on real embryos go away by citing that some 19th-century guy drew some embryos from memory. Hello? Is anyone at home in your head?

[Richard Kimball]

Patrick, you understand evolutionary theory as well as anyone I know, so I'd seriously like to know your take on this. I was taught this, and have seen it both supported and belittled by people who believe in evolution. To me, it seems more like a Rorschach test than a scientific observation, and I have no clue how you would either prove or disprove it.

[phantomworker]

It's really not news.

ROFLMAO, that's exactly what I was thinking.

The simplest solution is the design engineers at the "mammal feet" factory came up with this one because it was more economical, easier, superior to other methods, or they didn't wrap up the job as well as they thought they did.

Aw, How cute!!! ......

Or... it could be evolution at it's best. ;)

[madprof98]

Is anyone at home in your head?

I think one big reason the evolutionists are so unpopular is that they display such repulsive personalities--a throwback to the wolves from whom they are descended, perhaps?

In any case, I have no quarrel with the general theory of evolution, but I think it's worth noting that the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory has been supported with a whole lot of wishful thinking as well as willful fraud. I cannot help but wonder if the present "study" has included one or the other.

[the invisib1e hand]

I cracked open a chicken egg this morning and found a bright orange sphere. Obviously chickens evolved from oranges.

can't argue with that logic.

[muawiyah]

Or, it could be the "mammal feet" division at the colonial DNA factory.

Here's a problem ~ until we can replicate the supposed "evolutionary process" at will, or invent a time machine so we can observe it with certainty, we really don't have proof ~ just an idea.

Same goes for the DNA factory ~ although I think there's a tad more hope of finding it than of demonstrating evolution in a controlled experiment.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"I think one big reason the evolutionists are so unpopular is that they display such repulsive personalities--a throwback to the wolves from whom they are descended, perhaps?"

Who says that humans are descended from wolves?

"but I think it's worth noting that the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory has been supported with a whole lot of wishful thinking as well as willful fraud."

It's also not embraced by science for about 100 years.

[VadeRetro]

I think one big reason the evolutionists are so unpopular is that they display such repulsive personalities--a throwback to the wolves from whom they are descended, perhaps?

You come in with an absolutely painful logical fallacy, and no one was supposed to notice? Anyone who would see such a thing is repulsive for noticing bad things about your reasoning?

In any case, I have no quarrel with the general theory of evolution...

If your arguments against it were more honest, I would have less problem believing you here.

... the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory has been supported with a whole lot of wishful thinking as well as willful fraud.

This is a modern study with modern instruments. For more of the same, click here.

[Seamoth]

One set of drawings from the 19th century is a fraud. We have other drawings and we have plenty of real-life photographs now.

All embryos have throwbacks to their evolutionary history. This is entirely different from saying that mammals actually -become- reptiles at one point in their development.

[phantomworker]

Interesting book.