martes, febrero 10, 2009

El comienzo del EvoDevo de las Aves

Almost 100 years ago, 3 stalwart members of Scott's Polar Expedition marched into the darkness of the Antarctic winter on what would become known as The Worst Journey in the World (1). Their goal was to recover the eggs of emperor penguins whose embryos might reveal important insights about the now-defunct theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The men walked 108 km in temperatures as cold as −60 °C to reach the eggs, just as emperor penguins have done for millennia. Although 3 preserved eggs survived the journey, British embryologists dismissed their evolutionary insights.


(EXTRACTO) PNAS February 10, 2009 vol. 106 no. 6 1691-1692