The Embryological Development of the Human Face

This was your face when you were an embryo. The human face, during development in the embryo, goes from looking like some very exotic creature from the dark lagoon to being wrenched into having sideways facing eyes and a cleavage in the skull, to finally pulling its features forward-facing. While ontology may not fully recapitulate phylogeny, it is hard not to think that this is at least a part of what is going on in these gnarled contortions. This extreme resculpting that embryos undergo is the result of bolting so many different systems together during evolution in our journey from flagellate marine algae to human beings.