The Evolution of Man, V.2 by Ernst Haeckel (comprehension books .TXT) 📕

The existing Marsupials, of which the plant-eating kangaroo and the carnivorous opossum (Figure 2.272) are the best known, differ a good deal in structure, shape, and size, and correspond in many respects to the various orders of Placentals. Most of them live in Australia, and a small part of the Australian and East Malayan islands. There is now not a single living Marsupial on the mainland of Europe, Asia, or Africa. It was very different during the Mesozoic and even during the Cenozoic age. The sedimentary deposits of these periods contain a great number and variety of marsupial remains, sometimes of a colossal size, in various parts of the earth, and even in Europe. We may infer from this that the existing Marsupials are the remnant of an extensive earlier group that was distributed all over the earth. It had to give way in the struggle for life to the more powerful Placentals during the Tertiary period. The survivors of the group were able to keep alive in Australia and South America because the one was completely separated from the other parts of the earth during the whole of the Tertiary period, and the other during the greater part of it.

(FIGURE 2.271. Lower jaw of a Promammal (Dryolestes priscus), from the Jurassic of the Felsen strata. (From Marsh.))

From the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the existing Marsupials we may draw very interesting conclusions as to their intermediate position between the earlier Monotremes and the later Placentals. The defective development of the brain (especially the cerebrum), the possession of marsupial bones, and the simple construction of the allantois (without any placenta as yet) were inherited by the Marsupials, with many other features, from the Monotremes, and preserved. On the other hand, they have lost the independent bone (caracoideum) at the shoulder-blade. But we have a more important advance in the disappearance of the cloaca; the rectum and anus are separated by a partition from the uro-genital opening (sinus urogenitalis). Moreover, all the Marsupials have teats on the mammary glands, at which the new-born animal sucks. The teats pass into the cavity of a pouch or pocket on the ventral side of the mother, and this is supported by a couple of marsupial bones. The young are born in a very imperfect condition, and carried by the mother for some time longer in her pouch, until they are fully developed (Figure 2.272). In the giant kangaroo, which is as tall as a man, the embryo only develops for a month in the uterus, is then born in a very imperfect state, and finishes its growth in the mother's pouch (marsupium); it remains in this about nine months, and at first hangs continually on to the teat of the mammary gland.

(FIGURE 2.272. The crab-eating Opossum (Philander cancrivorus). The female has three young in the pouch. (From Brehm.)

From these and other characteristics (especially the peculiar construction of the internal and external sexual organs in male and female) it is clear that we must conceive the whole sub-class of the Marsupials as one stem group, which has been developed from the Promammalia. From one branch of these Marsupials (possibly from more than one) the stem-forms of the higher Mammals, the Placentals, were afterwards evolved. Of the existing forms of the Marsupials, which have undergone various modifications through adaptation to different environments, the family of the opossums (Didelphida or Pedimana) seems to be the oldest and nearest to the common stem-form of the whole class. To this family belong the crab-eating opossum of Brazil (Figure 2.272) and the opossum of Virginia, on the embryology of which Selenka has given us a valuable work (cf. Figures 1.63 to 1.67 and 1.131 to 1.135). These Didelphida climb trees like the apes, grasping the branches with their hand-shaped hind feet. We may conclude from this that the stem-forms of the Primates, which we must regard as the earliest Lemurs, were evolved directly from the opossum. We must not forget, however, that the conversion of the five-toed foot into a prehensile hand is polyphyletic. By the same adaptation to climbing trees the habit of grasping their branches with the feet has in many different cases brought about that opposition of the thumb or great toe to the other toes which makes the hand prehensile. We see this in the climbing lizards (chameleon), the birds, and the tree-dwelling mammals of various orders.

Some zoologists have lately advanced the opposite opinion, that the Marsupials represent a completely independent sub-class of the Mammals, with no direct relation to the Placentals, and developing independently of them from the Monotremes. But this opinion is untenable if we examine carefully the whole organisation of the three sub-classes, and do not lay the chief stress on incidental features and secondary adaptations (such as the formation of the marsupium). It is then clear that the Marsupials--viviparous Mammals without placenta--are a necessary transition from the oviparous Monotremes to the higher Placentals with chorion-villi. In this sense the Marsupial class certainly contains some of man's ancestors.

The long series of animal forms which we must regard as the ancestors of our race has been confined within narrower and narrower circles as our phylogenetic inquiry has progressed. The great majority of known animals do not fall in the line of our ancestry, and even within the vertebrate stem only a small number are found to do so. In the most advanced class of the stem, the mammals, there are only a few families that belong directly to our genealogical tree. The most important of these are the apes and their predecessors, the half-apes, and the earliest Placentals (Prochoriata).

The Placentals (also called Choriata, Monodelphia, Eutheria or Epitheria) are distinguished from the lower mammals we have just considered, the Monotremes and Marsupials, by a number of striking peculiarities. Man has all these distinctive features; that is a very significant fact. We may, on the ground of the most careful comparative-anatomical and ontogenetic research, formulate the thesis: "Man is in every respect a true Placental." He has all the characteristics of structure and development that distinguish the Placentals from the two lower divisions of the mammals, and, in fact, from all other animals. Among these characteristics we must especially notice the more advanced development of the brain. The fore-brain or cerebrum especially is much more developed in them than in the lower animals. The corpus callosum, which forms a sort of wide bridge connecting the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, is only fully formed in the Placentals; it is very rudimentary in the Marsupials and Monotremes. It is true that the lowest Placentals are not far removed from the Marsupials in cerebral development; but within the placental group we can trace an unbroken gradation of progressive development of the brain, rising gradually from this lowest stage up to the elaborate psychic organ of the apes and man. The human soul--a physiological function of the brain--is in reality only a more advanced ape-soul.

The mammary glands of the Placentals are provided with teats like those of the Marsupials; but we never find in the Placentals the pouch in which the latter carry and suckle their young. Nor have they the marsupial bones in the ventral wall at the anterior border of the pelvis, which the Marsupials have in common with the Monotremes, and which are formed by a partial ossification of the sinews of the inner oblique abdominal muscle. There are merely a few insignificant remnants of them in some of the Carnivora. The Placentals are also generally without the hook-shaped process at the angle of the lower jaw which is found in the Marsupials.

(FIGURE 2.273. Foetal membranes of the human embryo (diagrammatic). m the thick muscular wall of the womb. plu placenta [the inner layer (plu apostrophe) of which penetrates into the chorion-villi (chz) with its processes]. chf tufted, chl smooth chorion. a amnion, ah amniotic cavity, as amniotic sheath of the umbilical cord (which passes under into the navel of the embryo--not given here), dg vitelline duct, ds yelk sac, dv, dr decidua (vera and reflexa). The uterine cavity (uh) opens below into the vagina and above on the right into an oviduct (t). (From Kolliker.))

However, the feature that characterises the Placentals above all others, and that has given its name to the whole sub-class, is the formation of the placenta. We have already considered the formation and significance of this remarkable embryonic organ when we traced the development of the chorion and the allantois in the human embryo (

Chapter 1.

15). The urinary sac or the allantois, the curious vesicle that grows out of the hind part of the gut, has essentially the same structure and function in the human embryo as in that of all the other Amniotes (cf. Figures 1.194 to 1.196). There is a quite secondary difference, on which great stress has wrongly been laid, in the fact that in man and the higher apes the original cavity of the allantois quickly degenerates, and the rudiment of it sticks out as a solid projection from the primitive gut. The thin wall of the allantois consists of the same two layers or membranes as the wall of the gut--the gut-gland layer within and the gut-fibre layer without. In the gut-fibre layer of the allantois there are large blood-vessels, which serve for the nutrition, and especially the respiration, of the embryo--the umbilical vessels (

Chapter 1.

15). In the reptiles and birds the allantois enlarges into a spacious sac, which encloses the embryo with the amnion, and does not combine with the outer foetal membrane (the chorion). This is the case also with the lowest mammals, the oviparous Monotremes and most of the Marsupials. It is only in some of the later Marsupials (Peramelida) and all the Placentals that the allantois develops into the distinctive and remarkable structure that we call the placenta.

The placenta is formed by the branches of the blood-vessels in the wall of the allantois growing into the hollow ectodermic tufts (villi) of the chorion, which run into corresponding depressions in the mucous membrane of the womb. The latter also is richly permeated with blood-vessels which bring the mother's blood to the embryo. As the partition in the villi between the maternal blood-vessels and those of the foetus is extremely thin, there is a direct exchange of fluid between the two, and this is of the greatest importance in the nutrition of the young mammal. It is true that the maternal vessels do not entirely pass into the foetal vessels, so that the two kinds of blood are simply mixed. But the partition between them is so thin that the nutritive fluid easily transudes through