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Paleontology and the Recapitulation Theory. 



By E. R. Cumings. 



I. 



In reply to a severe critique of the recapitulation theory, or biogenetic 

 law. by Hurst (30), Bather remarks that "If the embryologists had not 

 forestalled them, the paleontologists would have had to invent the theory 

 of recapitulation." (1) This may be considered as a fair sample of the 

 general attitude of paleontologists of the Hyatt school, to which Bather 

 belongs, toward the recapitulation theory. 



Even the more conservative paleontologists, while inclined to use the 

 theory cum grano salts, recognize the weight of evidence that Hyatt and 

 his coworkers in the realm of paleobiology, have brought together, as is 

 evidenced by the following quotation from Zittel (65) : "Nevertheless 

 embyrcnic types are not entirely wanting among invertebrates. The Pale- 

 ozoic Belinurida? are bewilderingly like the larvae of the living Limulus. 

 The pentacrinoid larva of Antedon is nearer many fossil crinoids than the 



full grown animal Among pelecypods the stages of early youth 



of oysters and Pectinidse may be compared with Paleozoic Aviculida?. 

 Among brachiopods, according to Beecher. the stages which lhing Tere- 

 hratulida* pass through in the development of their arm-skeleton correspond 

 with a number of fossil genera. The beautiful researches of Hyatt, Wiir- 

 tenburger and Branco. have shown that all Ammonites and Ceratites pass 

 through a goniatite stage, and that the inner whorls of an Ammonite con- 

 stantly resemble, in form, ornament and suture line the adult condition of 

 some previously existing genus or other." 



In violent contrast with this full acceptance, or this guarded ac- 

 ceptance of the theory on the part of the paleontologists, is the position of 

 a considerable school of embryologists and zoologists. Perhaps no one 

 lias put the case against the theory more baldly and forcibly than Mont- 

 gomery in his recent book on "An Analysis of Racial Descent" (42). He 

 says: "The method is wrong in principle, to compare an adult stage of 

 one organism with an immature stage of another." And again: "There- 

 fore we can only conclude that the embryogeny does not furnish any re- 

 capitulation of the phylogeny. not even a recapitulation marred at occa- 



[20—230031 



