Embryological

Evidence
C O MPARATIVE AN ATO MY
E Q: H OW D O AN ATOM IC AL FE AT UR E S P ROVID E
E VID E N C E OF E VOLU TIO N ?
How did Darwin come up with his
ideas on evolution?
With lots of different kinds of EVIDENCE
Darwin saw that there was a pattern of similarity
between the embryos of different animals. Embryos
tend to look similar to each other and then their traits
diverge from each other as their development
progresses.

Dog Cat
 Why are embryos used as a piece of
evidence to support the theory of
Evolution?
If you look at embryos of vertebrates,
they looked similar and at certain
stages it is difficult to distinguish one
animal from another. Over time, some
of the traits disappear. For example,
both humans and fish have gill slits
but the gills dont develop in humans.
These early developmental similarities
suggest different kinds of animals are
related and that all of these animals
come from a common ancestor. In
summation, an organisms basic body
plan for life is similar but they have
evolved different traits to survive in
What is an embryo?
Haeckels
Embryos
1n 1892, Ernest
Haeckel drew
embryonic
illustrations of
different
organisms stages
of development

How are they

similar?
What do you
think is the
reason for their
similarities?
 Watch this video about embryo development HERE
Guess the Embryo
Go to the Nova website
and launch the
interactive. Read the
information then start
guessing what organism
matches the embryo.
HERE
Haeckels Embryos

Although these drawings

are important and do
provide a piece of the
evolutionary puzzle there
were some some issues
presented about the
Haeckels drawings. His
drawings were a bit
exaggerated as you will
hear in the next video.
 Video Questions
Watch this video and answer
the following questions? HERE
1. Who was Ernest Haeckel? How
did his work contribute to
Darwins Theory of Evolution?
2. What did Haeckels drawing
show?
3. What was the problem with
Haeckels drawings?
4. One of main points of Haeckels
drawings is that more closely related
embryo forms a more recent common
ancestor. If you look at the his embryo
drawings, which organisms do you
think share a more recent common
ancestor?
5. Another important idea from
Haeckels drawing that scientists have
held up over the years is that within
closely related forms, earlier stages
will be more similar than late stages.
Based on what you saw on the website
Guess the Embryo, do you agree? Go
back if needed HERE
The GIST

The point with Haeckels

drawings is that, even
though he fudged his
data (never good in
science) there is still
some validity to the
overall idea that
organisms are alike in the
early stages of
development, thus
showing that organisms
The Vertebrate Body
C O LO R
Pick 6 colors
First color all of the
fertilized eggs one color
Next color all of the late
cleavage cells a different
color
And so onbody
segments, limb bud
stage, etc.