Haeckel presented this embryo board in 1866. The embryos drawn by him resemble each other. On this drawing, Haeckel creates "biogenous desks of Basic Law"
One of the most popular and familiar pieces of evidence used to bolster the theory of evolution – reproduced for decades in most high school and college biology textbooks – is fraudulent, and has been known to be fraudulent for nearly 100 years.
Most people have seen those drawings of developing human embryos next to developing animal embryos, and they look virtually indistinguishable. (The Haeckel embryo sequence shown purported to show – left to right – a hog, calf, rabbit and human). This has long been said to demonstrate that humans share a common ancestry with these animals and thus prove the theory of evolution.
These pictures were designed by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel. What few people know – and one of many surprises in the evolution debate reported in the current edition of WorldNet magazine – is that they were fakes. At Jena, the university where he taught, Haeckel was charged...