Ernst Haeckel Leptomedusae jellyfish Postcard
Leptomedusae or Leptomedusa, commonly called thecate hydroids, are a cnidarian order in the subclass Leptolinae. They were formerly placed at suborder rank in the paraphyletic "Hydroida". Their closest living relatives, according to the modern view, are the Anthomedusae which are similar enough to have always been considered closely related, and the very apomorphic Siphonophora which were placed outside the "Hydroida". Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny. The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Art Forms of Nature"). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträtsel (1895–1899; in English: The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution.
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