Reliving evolution?

An old evolution myth still hanging around is the notion that things that look like gill-slits, tails, etc. in developing human embryos show the embryo repeating all the stages of evolution.  In 1866, Ernst Haeckel proposed his "biogenetic law" (not to be confused with the law of biogenesis that says life only comes from life).  His idea was that growing vertebrate embryos went through all the forms of their supposed evolutionary ancestors ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny").  He published drawings comparing growing embryos of a number of animals such as the pig, cat, salamander, etc. to growing human embryos.  The similarities that he said he found helped persuade people to believe the theory of evolution.  Scientists eventually discovered enough about embryology to quietly discard the "biogenetic law", but it was not until a careful photographic study of growing vertebrate embryos was conducted in 1997 that Haeckel's deceit was fully revealed.  They found that his drawings were so far from reality that they could not have been done from the actual embryos.³¹  He must have faked them.