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The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the ...
A recapitulation theory of evolutionary development was proposed by Étienne Serres in 1824–26, echoing the 1808 ideas of Johann Friedrich Meckel. They argued that the embryos of 'higher' animals went through or recapitulated a series of stages, each of which resembled an animal lower down the great chain of being .
Johann Friedrich Meckel (17 October 1781 – 31 October 1833), often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger, was a German anatomist born in Halle. He worked as a professor of anatomy, pathology and zoology at the University of Halle, Germany.
He specifically intended to rebut Johann Friedrich Meckel's 1808 recapitulation theory. According to that theory, embryos pass through successive stages that represent the adult forms of less complex organisms in the course of development, and that ultimately reflects scala naturae (the great chain of being).
This was in sharp contrast to the recapitulation theory of Johann Friedrich Meckel (and later of Ernst Haeckel), which claimed that embryos went through stages resembling adult organisms from successive stages of the scala naturae from supposedly lowest to highest levels of organisation. [53] [54] [4]
Gould describes the recapitulationists in the 19th century, from the German Lorenz Oken and Johann Friedrich Meckel to the French Étienne Serres. The book examines the criticism of the theory by the Baltic German Karl Ernst von Baer and the Swiss-American Louis Agassiz , and relates 19th century phylogeny to Charles Darwin 's 1859 theory of ...
Meckel's cartilage is a piece of cartilage from which the mandibles (lower jaws) of vertebrates evolved. Originally it was the lower of two cartilages which supported the first branchial arch in early fish. Then it grew longer and stronger, and acquired muscles capable of closing the developing jaw. [1]
1759: Description of mesonephros by Caspar Friedrich Wolff [79] 1790s: Recapitulation theory by Johann Friedrich Meckel and Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer [80] Late 1790s/early 1800s: Humboldtian science by Alexander von Humboldt [81] 1834: Humboldt penguin by Franz Meyen, after its initial discovery by Alexander von Humboldt [82]