• To Not Get Lost in the Trees of Life (ToL)

    by Christoph — Which pic­ture comes to your mind if you think of the 'Tree of Life' (ToL) ? Maybe it's Ernst Haeckel's ven­er­a­ble oak tree ? Or is it rather Carl Woese's fa­mous "three do­mains" phy­lo­ge­netic tree ? Al­though highly ab­stract, the lat­ter still re­sem­bles a tree with stem and branches, at least as much as does the fa­mous "I think" sketch by Char­les Dar­win, on page 36 in his Note­book B.

  • Ernst Haeckel's 'Pedi­gree of Man'

    Pic­tures Con­sid­ered #42 by Christoph — It's ex­actly 150 years since the pic­ture con­sid­ered in this post was pub­lished in the 'Gen­eral Mor­phol­ogy of Or­gan­isms' by Ernst Haeckel (1866). "Phy­logeny is the evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory of or­gan­isms," ex­plains Uwe Hoßfeld, co-au­thor of a re­cent pa­per in 'Na­ture' that cel­e­brates this an­niver­sary. "Be­cause Haeckel was the first ac­tu­ally to de­fine this term, in..."