This nonsense was exposed for the lie it is a long time ago. Recycled dog feces.
By whom?
Thanks for the pings!
Finally. Creation science at work.
Next month we'll hear from the creationists that fetuses aren't really human because they're not mentioned in Genesis. Babies are examples of special creation just before their born.
All that weight gain and movement are "just rocks."
What was exposed as nonsense was Haeckel's theory of embryonic "recapitulation". This theory held that the embryonic and fetal development of an "advanced" animal pass progressively through (or resemble) the adult stages of less advanced organisms.
Haeckel's view required, effectively, that changes in embryonic development must always be added on to the end of the developmental process, and that early stages must never be lost.
The directly competing view was advanced, most notably, by the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer. Instead of Haeckel's wooden view that embryological development is a purely additive process, von Baer argued that it is one where general features (i.e. those common to larger groups of organisms) appear first, and more specialized ones (those particular to smaller groups) tend to appear later.
Here are von Baer's "principles," taken from this wepage:
The four principles of Karl Ernst von Baer
In 1828, von Baer reported, "I have two small embryos preserved in alcohol, that I forgot to label. At present I am unable to determine the genus to which they belong. They may be lizards, small birds, or even mammals." Figure 1.5 allows us to appreciate his quandary. All vertebrate embryos (fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals) begin with a basically similar structure. From his detailed study of chick development and his comparison of chick embryos with the embryos of other vertebrates, von Baer derived four generalizations (now often referred to as "von Baer's laws"), stated here with some vertebrate examples:
1. The general features of a large group of animals appear earlier in development than do the specialized features of a smaller group. All developing vertebrates appear very similar shortly after gastrulation. It is only later in development that the special features of class, order, and finally species emerge. All vertebrate embryos have gill arches, notochords, spinal cords, and primitive kidneys.
2. Less general characters are developed from the more general, until finally the most specialized appear. All vertebrates initially have the same type of skin. Only later does the skin develop fish scales, reptilian scales, bird feathers, or the hair, claws, and nails of mammals. Similarly, the early development of the limb is essentially the same in all vertebrates. Only later do the differences between legs, wings, and arms become apparent.
3. The embryo of a given species, instead of passing through the adult stages of lower animals, departs more and more from them. The visceral clefts of embryonic birds and mammals do not resemble the gill slits of adult fish in detail. Rather, they resemble the visceral clefts of embryonic fish and other embryonic vertebrates. Whereas fish preserve and elaborate these clefts into true gill slits, mammals convert them into structures such as the eustachian tubes (between the ear and mouth).
4. Therefore, the early embryo of a higher animal is never like a lower animal, but only like its early embryo. Human embryos never pass through a stage equivalent to an adult fish or bird. Rather, human embryos initially share characteristics in common with fish and avian embryos. Later, the mammalian and other embryos diverge, none of them passing through the stages of the others.
Von Baer also recognized that there is a common pattern to all vertebrate development: the three germ layers give rise to different organs, and this derivation of the organs is constant whether the organism is a fish, a frog, or a chick.
Notice that von Baer's view (the one adopted by Darwin himself and most later evolutionists) not only allows for embyrological homologies, it acknowledges and requires them.
Nor was von Baer's view as wooden as Haeckel's. After all Haeckel formulated an inviolable "law", whereas von Baer wrote in terms of general "principles". Von Baer recognized that changes (or simple differences, von Baer being a creationist) do TEND to occur later in development, if only because making them earlier will tend to interfere prohibitively with later developmental processes. Thus von Baer's general principles allow for the possibility of partial "recapitulation" with respect to this feature or that feature, even while denying it as an inviolate and general law.
You've done as most antievolutionists do, and reflexively reacted to any reference whatever to embryological homology as an invocation of Haeckel's law. This is like declaring that anyone who comments on the complex interactions of organisms and their environments is a racial environmentalist.
Makes you fairly question an evolutionist's inherent powers of observation -- or lack thereof -- when one is blinded so by their own foolish pre-suppositions and an anti-science agenda.
Rehashing the same old failed play book. Kinda reminds you of the Democrats, doesn't it?
Evo's speak with about the same amount of credibility -- not to mention the same smarmy bile -- as Ward Churchill does, and have more in common with Democrats, than they'll ever admit here on FR.
Since the Creationists are the only honest scientists in these debates, we can just remain content to remind Evo-dem Dweepers of that and watch them all just slink off for the darker places from whence they came.