The Evolution of Man, vol 2 by Ernst Haeckel (fun books to read for adults TXT) 📕

(FIGURE 2.264. The lizard (Hatteria punctata = Sphenodon punctatus) of New Zealand. The sole surviving proreptile. (From Brehm.))

Taking all these peculiarities of the Amniotes together, it is impossible to doubt that all the animals of this group—all reptiles, birds, and mammals—have a common origin, and form a single blood-related stem. Our own race belongs to this stem. Man is, in every feature of his organisation and embryonic development, a true Amniote, and has descended from the Protamniote with all the other Amniotes. Though they appeared at the end (possibly even in the middle) of the Paleozoic age, the Amniotes only reached their full development during the Mesozoic age. The birds and mammals made their first appearance during this period. Even the reptiles show their greatest growth at this time, so that it is called “the reptile age.” The extinct Protamniote, the ancestor of the whole group, belongs in its whole organisation to the reptile class.

The genealogical tree of the amniote group is clearly indicated in its chief lines by their paleontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny. The group succeeding the Protamniote divided into two branches. The branch that will claim our whole interest is the class of the Mammals. The other branch, which developed in a totally different direction, and only comes in contact with the Mammals at its root, is the combined group of the reptiles and birds; these two classes may, with Huxley, be conveniently grouped together as the Sauropsida. Their common stem-form is an extinct lizard-like reptile of the order of the Rhyncocephalia. From this have been developed in various directions the serpents, crocodiles, tortoises, etc.—in a word, all the members of the reptile class. But the remarkable class of the birds has also been evolved directly from a branch of the reptile group, as is now established beyond question. The embryos of the reptiles and birds are identical until a very late stage, and have an astonishing resemblance even later. Their whole structure agrees so much that no anatomist now questions the descent of the birds from the reptiles. On the other hand, the mammal line has descended from the group of the Sauromammalia, a different branch of the Proreptilia. It is connected at its deepest roots with the reptile line, but it then diverges completely from it and follows a distinctive development. Man is the highest outcome of this class, the “crown of creation.” The hypothesis that the three higher Vertebrate classes represent a single Amniote-stem, and that the common root of this stem is to be found in the amphibian class, is now generally admitted.

(FIGURE 2.265. Homoeosaurus pulchellus, a Jurassic proreptile from Kehlheim. (From Zittel.))

The instructive group of the Permian Tocosauria, the common root from which the divergent stems of the Sauropsids and mammals have issued, merits our particular attention as the stem-group of all the Amniotes. Fortunately a living representative of this extinct ancestral group has been preserved to our day; this is the remarkable lizard of New Zealand, Hatteria punctata (Figure 2.264). Externally it differs little from the ordinary lizard; but in many important points of internal structure, especially in the primitive construction of the vertebral column, the skull, and the limbs, it occupies a much lower position, and approaches its amphibian ancestors, the Stegocephala. Hence Hatteria is the phylogenetically oldest of all living reptiles, an isolated survivor from the Permian period, closely resembling the common ancestor of the Amniotes. It must differ so little from this extinct form, our hypothetical Protamniote, that we put it next to the Proreptilia. The remarkable Permian Palaehatteria, that Credner discovered in the Plauen terrain at Dresden in 1888, belongs to the same group (Figure 2.266). The Jurassic genus Homoeosaurus (Figure 2.265), of which well-preserved skeletons are found in the Solenhofen schists, is perhaps still more closely related to them.

Unfortunately, the numerous fossil remains of Permian and Triassic Tocosauria that we have found in the last two decades are, for the most part, very imperfectly preserved. Very often we can make only precarious inferences from these skeletal fragments as to the anatomic characters of the soft parts that went with the bony skeleton of the extinct Tocosauria. Hence it has not yet been possible to arrange these important fossils with any confidence in the ancestral series that descend from the Protamniotes to the Sauropsids on the one side and the Mammals on the other. Opinions are particularly divided as to the place in classification and the phylogenetic significance of the remarkable Theromorpha. Cope gives this name to a very interesting and extensive group of extinct terrestrial reptiles, of which we have only fossil remains from the Permian and Triassic strata. Forty years ago some of these Therosauria (freshwater animals) were described by Owen as Anomodontia. But during the last twenty years the distinguished American paleontologists, Cope and Osborn, have greatly increased our knowledge of them, and have claimed that the stem-forms of the Mammals must be sought in this order. As a matter of fact, the Theromorpha are nearer to the Mammals in the chief points of structure than any other reptiles. This is especially true of the Thereodontia, to which the Pureosauria and Pelycosauria belong (Figure 2.267). The whole structure of their pelvis and hind-feet has attained the same form as in the Monotremes, the lowest Mammals. The formation of the scapula and the quadrate bone shows an approach to the Mammals such as we find in no other group of reptiles. The teeth also are already divided into incisors, canines, and molars. Nevertheless, it is very doubtful whether the Theromorpha really are in the ancestral line of the Sauromammals, or lead direct from the Tocosauria to the earliest Mammals. Other experts on this group believe that it is an independent legion of the reptiles, connected, perhaps, at its lowest root, with the Sauromammals, but developed quite independently of the Mammals—though parallel to them in many ways.

One of the most important of the zoological facts that we rely on in our investigation of the genealogy of the human race is the position of man in the Mammal class. However different the views of zoologists may have been as to this position in detail, and as to his relations to the apes, no scientist has ever doubted that man is a true mammal in his whole organisation and development. Linne drew attention to this fact in the first edition of his famous Systema Naturae (1735). As will be seen in any museum of anatomy or any manual of comparative anatomy; the human frame has all the characteristics that are common to the Mammals and distinguish them conspicuously from all other animals.

(FIGURE 2.266. Skull of a Permian lizard (Palaehatteria longicaudata). (From Credner.) n nasal bone, pf frontal bone, l lachrymal bone, po postorbital bone, sq covering bone, i cheek-bone, vo vomer, im intermaxillary.)

If we examine this undoubted fact from the point of view of phylogeny, in the light of the theory of descent, it follows at once that man is of a common stem with all the other Mammals, and comes from the same root as they. But the various features in which the Mammals agree and by which they are distinguished are of such a character as to make a polyphyletic hypothesis quite inadmissible. It is impossible to entertain the idea that all the living and extinct Mammals come from a number of separate roots. If we accept the general theory of evolution, we are bound to admit the monophyletic hypothesis of the descent of all the Mammals (including man) from a single mammalian stem-form. We may call this long-extinct root-form and its earliest descendants (a few genera of one family) “primitive mammals” or “stem-mammals” (Promammalia). As we have already seen, this root-form developed from the primitive Proreptile stem in a totally different direction from the birds, and soon separated from the main stem of the reptiles. The differences between the Mammals and the reptiles and birds are so important and characteristic that we can assume with complete confidence this division of the vertebrate stem at the commencement of the development of the Amniotes. The reptiles and birds, which we group together as the Sauropsids, generally agree in the characteristic structure of the skull and brain, and this is notably different from that of the Mammals. In most of the reptiles and birds the skull is connected with the first cervical vertebra (the atlas) by a single, and in the Mammals (and Amphibia) by a double, condyle at the back of the head. In the former the lower jaw is composed of several pieces, and connected with the skull so that it can move by a special maxillary bone (the quadratum); in the Mammals the lower jaw consists of one pair of bony pieces, which articulate directly with the temporal bone. Further, in the Sauropsids the skin is clothed with scales or feathers; in the Mammals with hair. The red blood-cells of the former have a nucleus; those of the latter have not. In fine, two quite characteristic features of the Mammals, which distinguish them not only from the birds and reptiles, but from all other animals, are the possession of a complete diaphragm and of mammary glands that produce the milk for the nutrition of the young. It is only in the Mammals that the diaphragm forms a transverse partition of the body-cavity, completely separating the pectoral from the abdominal cavity. It is only in the mammals that the mother suckles its young, and this rightly gives the name to the whole class (mamma = breast).

(FIGURE 2.267. Skull of a Triassic theromorphum (Galesaurus planiceps), from the Karoo formation in South Africa. (From Owen.) a from the right, b from below, c from above, d tricuspid tooth. N nostrils, NA nasal bone, Mx upper jaw, Prf prefrontal, Fr frontal bone, A eye-pits, S temple-pits. Pa Parietal eye, Bo joint at back of head, Pt pterygoid-bone, Md lower jaw.)

From these pregnant facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny it follows absolutely that the whole of the Mammals belong to a single natural stem, which branched off at an early date from the reptile-root. It follows further with the same absolute certainty that the human race is also a branch of this stem. Man shares all the characteristics I have described with all the Mammals, and differs in them from all other animals. Finally, from these facts we deduce with the same confidence those advances in the vertebrate organisation by which one branch of the Sauromammals was converted into the stem-form of the Mammals. Of these advances the chief were: (1) The characteristic modification of the skull and the brain; (2) the development of a hairy coat; (3) the complete formation of the diaphragm; and (4) the construction of the mammary glands and adaptation to suckling. Other important changes of structure proceeded step by step with these.

The epoch at which these important advances were made, and the foundation of the Mammal class was laid, may be put with great probability in the first section of the Mesozoic or secondary age—the Triassic period. The oldest fossil remains of mammals that we know were found in strata that belong to the earliest Triassic period—the upper Kueper. One of the earliest forms is the genus Dromatherium, from the North American Triassic (Figure 2.268). Their teeth still strikingly recall those of the Pelycosauria. Hence we may assume that this small and probably insectivorous mammal belonged to the stem-group of the Promammals. We do not find any positive trace of the third and most advanced division of the Mammals—the Placentals. These (including man) are much younger, and we