Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
or five on each side in the higher vertebrates (Figure 1.170 d, f, f
apostrophe, f double apostrophe). In some of the fishes (selachii) and
in the cyclostoma we find six or seven of them permanently.
These remarkable structures had originally the function of respiratory
organs--gills. In the fishes the water that serves for breathing, and
is taken in at the mouth, still always passes out by the branchial
clefts at the sides of the gullet. In the higher vertebrates they
afterwards disappear. The branchial arches are converted partly into
the jaws, partly into the bones of the tongue and the ear. From the
first gill-cleft is formed the tympanic cavity of the ear.
There are few parts of the vertebrate organism that, like the outer
covering or integument of the body, are not subject to metamerism. The
outer skin (epidermis) is unsegmented from the first, and proceeds
from the continuous horny plate. Moreover, the underlying cutis is
also not metamerous, although it develops from the segmental structure
of the cutis-plates (Figures 1.161 and 1.162 cp). The vertebrates are
strikingly and profoundly different from the articulates in these
respects also.
Further, most of the vertebrates still have a number of unarticulated
organs, which have arisen locally, by adaptation of particular parts
of the body to certain special functions. Of this character are the
sense-organs in the episoma, and the limbs, the heart, the spleen, and
the large visceral glands--lungs, liver, pancreas, etc.--in the
hyposoma. The heart is originally only a local spindle-shaped
enlargement of the large ventral blood-vessel or principal vein, at
the point where the subintestinal passes into the branchial artery, at
the limit of the head and trunk (Figures 1.170 and 1.171). The three
higher sense-organs--nose, eye, and ear--were originally developed in
the same form in all the craniotes, as three pairs of small
depressions in the skin at the side of the head.
The organ of smell, the nose, has the appearance of a pair of small
pits above the mouth-aperture, in front of the head (Figure 1.169 n).
The organ of sight, the eye, is found at the side of the head, also in
the shape of a depression (Figures 1.169 l and 1.170 b), to which
corresponds a large outgrowth of the foremost cerebral vesicle on each
side. Farther behind, at each side of the head, there is a third
depression, the first trace of the organ of hearing (Figure 1.169 g).
As yet we can see nothing of the later elaborate structure of these
organs, nor of the characteristic build of the face.
(FIGURE 1.174. Development of the lizard's legs (Lacerta agilis), with
special relation to their blood-vessels. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 right
fore-leg; 13, 15 left fore-leg; 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 right hind-leg; 14,
16 left hind-leg; SRV lateral veins of the trunk, VU umbilical vein.
(From F. Hochstetter.))
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