Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
A very important and remarkable process now follows—namely, the curving
or invagination of the blastula (Fig. H). The vesicle with a single
layer of cells for wall is converted into a cup with a wall of two
layers of cells (cf. Figs. G, H, I). A certain spot at the surface of
the sphere is flattened, and then bent inward. This depression sinks
deeper and deeper, growing at the cost of the internal cavity. The
latter decreases as the hollow deepens. At last the internal cavity
disappears altogether, the inner side of the blastoderm (that which
lines the depression) coming to lie close on the outer side. At the
same time, the cells of the two sections assume different sizes and
shapes; the inner cells are more round and the outer more oval (Fig.
I). In this way the embryo takes the form of a cup or jar-shaped body,
with a wall made up of two layers of cells, the inner cavity of which
opens to the outside at one end (the spot where the depression was
originally formed). We call this very important and interesting
embryonic form the “cup-embryo” or “cup-larva” (_gastrula,_ Fig. 29, I
longitudinal section, K external view). I have in my _Natural History
of Creation_ given the name of _depula_ to the remarkable intermediate
form which appears at the passage of the blastula into the gastrula. In
this intermediate stage there are two cavities in the embryo—the
original cavity (_blastocœl_) which is disappearing, and the primitive
gut-cavity (_progaster_) which is forming.
I regard the gastrula as the most important and significant embryonic
form in the animal world. In all real animals (that is, excluding the
unicellular protists) the segmentation of the ovum produces either a
pure, primitive, palingenetic gastrula (Fig. 29 I, K) or an equally
instructive cenogenetic form, which has been developed in time from the
first, and can be directly reduced to it. It is certainly a fact of the
greatest interest and instructiveness that animals of the most
different stems—vertebrates and tunicates, molluscs and articulates,
echinoderms and annelids, cnidaria and sponges—proceed from one and the
same embryonic form. In illustration I give a few
pure gastrula forms from various groups of animals (Figs. 30–35,
explanation given below each).
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