Ernst Haeckel, a 19th-century German biologist, proposed the theory of recapitulation or “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” This theory suggests that the development of an individual organism (ontogeny) as an embryo mirrors the evolutionary history of the species (phylogeny). According to Haeckel, the stages of development an embryo goes through, are similar to the stages of evolution that its ancestors experienced.
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