Darwin found that the similarities of embryos were powerful evidence for evolution. Centuries before people thought that the human embryo would look like a tiny baby. But it was discovered with the microscope they didn't look like that at all. Instead they found lots of similarities and progression with other living organisms. Every embryo had traits that looked like fish to start out with. Then for those that weren't fish they went through stages like amphibians. Then for those who weren't amphibians they shared traits like reptiles. And finally those that were not reptiles developed into mammals. It NEVER worked the other way. No fish had mammal traits. No amphibian had reptile traits. No reptile had mammal only traits. It is fascinating that the human embryo has a tail and slits that are related to gills on a fish embryo.
We now know that genes are what controls the whole process and all living things have the base elements. The process to create a fly is the same as the human. It reminds me of a computer with ones and zeros. It produces incredible variety. Genes are far more powerful and are the engine to nearly infinite variety and that is all we see around us. I will like to live 150 more years and see where science takes us unless religion kills us first.
Click on this Nova interactive website to guess which embryo is which and also see pictures of their development.
the above image of developing embryos is a fraud...
ReplyDeleteErnst Haeckel's Drawing
ReplyDeleteErnst Haeckl's Drawings (first image/chart) has been proven to be a fraud! Please do more research than a single google. Also, I do not even care to go through the list of corrections that are needed to even bring the above content up to the standards of a 5th graders rough draft. Here is my suggestion.... Langman's Medical Embryology.
They are not fraud. Ancient maps of the world aren't perfect and that is what we have here. Jerry Coyne deals with these drawing in his book, Why Evolution Is True. It might be over ambitious and tweaked, but different embryos resemble each other showing their common ancestry. They go through similar stages even some parts such as the kidney are developed and dropped and redeveloped.
ReplyDeleteI also included the Nova link. It is hard to not see the comparative facts unless you already made up your mind.
I looked through Langman's book and don't see how that will help since it is only referring to human embryos and not comparative embryology which is the topic here.