Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
To the Indecidua belong three important groups of mammals: the Lemurs
(Prosimiae), the Ungulates (tapirs, horses, pigs, ruminants, etc.),
and the Cetacea (dolphins and whales). In these Indecidua the villi
are distributed over the whole surface of the chorion (or its greater
part) either singly or in groups. They are only loosely connected with
the mucous coat of the uterus, so that the whole foetal membrane with
its villi can be easily withdrawn from the uterine depressions like a
hand from a glove. There is no real coalescence of the two placentas
at any part of the surface of contact. Hence at birth the foetal
placenta alone comes away; the uterine placenta is not torn away with
it.
The formation of the placenta is very different in the second and
higher section of the Placentals, the Deciduata. Here again the whole
surface of the chorion is thickly covered with the villi in the
beginning. But they afterwards disappear from one part of the surface,
and grow proportionately thicker on the other part. We thus get a
differentiation between the smooth chorion (chorion laeve, Figure
2.273 chl) and the thickly-tufted chorion (chorion frondosum, Figure
2.273 chf). The former has only a few small villi or none at all; the
latter is thickly covered with large and well-developed villi; this
alone now constitutes the placenta. In the great majority of the
Deciduata the placenta has the same shape as in man (Figures 1.197 and
1.200)--namely a thick, circular disk like a cake; so we find in the
Insectivora, Chiroptera, Rodents, and Apes. This discoplacenta lies on
one side of the chorion. But in the Sarcotheria (both the Carnivora
and the seals, Pinnipedia) and in the elephant and several other
Deciduates we find a zonoplacenta; in these the rich mass of villi
runs like a girdle round the middle of the ellipsoid chorion, the two
poles of it being free from them.
(FIGURE 2.275. The Slender Lori (Stenops gracilis) of Ceylon, a
tail-less lemur.)
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