Ernst Haeckel and the Biogenetic Law (An informed opinion)
In the early 1900s, a fusion of evolution and embryology was wrongly interpreted to support a linear (as opposed to a branched) model of evolution. The interpretation of Ernst Haeckel was that every organism evolved by the terminal addition of a new stage to the end of the last "highest" organism. Thus, he saw the entire animal kingdom as representing truncated steps of human development.
Haeckel and the Vertebrate Archetype
In the early 1900s, a fusion of evolution and embryology was wrongly interpreted to support a linear (as opposed to a branched) model of evolution. The interpretation of Ernst Haeckel was that every organism evolved by the terminal addition of a new stage to the end of the last "highest" organism. Thus, he saw the entire animal kingdom as representing truncated steps of human development.