[Al Simmons]

I thought this was a fascinating piece of news. Have at it, folks!

[Old_Mil]

Ontogenic recapitulation is an old theory which has been thoroughly discredited. Of course, that doesn't mean that evolutionary "scientists" are actually going to stop using such a useful fairy tale.

[SampleMan]

Actually, if you look at a human embryo the head is huge and the body spindly. This is obvious proof that we evolved from space aliens. What other possible explanation could there be? Fish heads aren't huge. Reptilian heads aren't huge. No, it is an obvious connection to large headed, saucer eyed, aliens.

[Seamoth]

HAECKEL WAS A FRAUD! </sarcasm>

Seriously...

Ontogeny (embryonic development) does not recapture phylogeny (evolution), and thus Haeckel was wrong to say so, and of course, he was wrong to alter these drawings...

However, like anatomy, ontogeny does follow a remarkable progression when you move from species to species in the evolutionary chain.

First, the more similar two species are, and the closer they are in evolutionary history, the more similar their respective ontogeny will be. In most cases, the development of the embryos will be very similar till they diverge at some point in the process.

Second, the more similar two species are, the further to the extent that they can be crossbred:

1. Will voluntarily mate and produce fertile offspring;
2. Will produce fertile offspring, but will not usually voluntarily mate;
3. Will produce infertile offspring;
4. Can copulate but pregnancy will result in spotaneous abortion;
5. Fertilization cannot happen at all.

Haeckel was saying that at some point a baby will turn into a reptile, then a bird, and so on. That, of course, is wrong. But, it is also true that ontogeny has remarkable "leftovers" and insights into our evolutionary history, and this article is one example.

[proudmilitarymrs]

Yeah, and when I was a kid, my brothers said I looked like a toad! This means about as much................

[Dallas59]

[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.

[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.

[Elsie]

Darrell Hannah ---- Splash

[shuckmaster]

Thanks for a great article! It's wonderful to live in a time when the truth about evolution is finally getting the widespread research and respect it deserves after ages of lies and superstitions.

[Echo Talon]

and they call this science?

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP - shades of Haeckel

[MEGoody]

The feet of human embryos taking shape in the womb reveal links to prehistoric fish and reptiles, a new study finds.

LOL What a hoot. Some evolutionists will strain at anything in order to bolster their flagging faith in their chosen 'religion'.