Lexic.us

Medical Definition of Gastraea

1. A primeval larval form; a double-walled sac from which, according to the hypothesis of Haeckel, man and all other animals, that in the first stages of their individual evolution pass through a two-layered structural stage, or gastrula form, must have descended. This idea constitutes the Gastraea theory of Haeckel. See Gastrula. Origin: NL, from Gr, the stomach. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Gastraea

Literary usage of Gastraea

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1897)
"... Stage : gastraea, Ontogenetically reproduced in the Gastrula and the Two-layered Gei-m-disc. ..."

2. Studies from the Morphological Laboratory in the University of Cambridge by Francis Maitland Balfour, Adam Sedgwick (1889)
"If the answer to the latter question falls within the province of the gastraea theory, Balfour did not accept that theory and ..."

3. Haeckel, His Life and Work by Wilhelm Bölsche (1906)
"That is an outline of the famous gastraea- theory, that Haeckel discovered when he ... If this gastraea-theory was correct, it was an incalculable gain for ..."

4. The Library of Original Sources by Oliver Joseph Thatcher (1907)
"... consists merely of two simple germ-layers, we may at once safely infer that a very ancient ancestral form is represented by the two-layered gastraea. ..."

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