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From Histories of Life: Searching for Order
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von Baer, diagram
This branching tree diagram by German biologist Karl Ernst von Baer (in an article by Martin Barry) was the result of his early 19th-century study of embryos. He convinced naturalists that research on embryos could provide clues for ordering the relationships among all animals. He argued that embryos of organisms begin to grow identically, but later start to diverge—first, into basic groups, and then, into individual species. Although this diagram seems to foretell Darwin’s evolutionary tree, it is in fact an attack on early evolutionary theories known collectively as “transformism.”
Martin Barry (1802–1855). “Further Observations on the Unity of Structure…,” Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. Vol. 22. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1837.
