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Abstract

The descriptions of formation of the human yolk sac have proven surprisingly controversial over the years. Although controversy itself is natural, the surprise in this case is that many of the people who disagreed were looking at identical specimens, those from the Carnegie collections of human embryos. As will be seen in the following sections, the reasons for the controversy are several. In some instances a lack of resolution of the cells or of basement membranes was a problem. In other instances the investigators chose not to consider the pattern of yolk sac development in other eutherian mammals. Perhaps most significant was the use of different terms to describe the same structure. For example, the portion of the primary yolk sac present in the previllous stage has been called primary yolk sac, umbilical vesicle, Heuser’s membrane, and exocelomic membrane.

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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Enders, A.C., King, B.F. (1993). Development of the Human Yolk Sac. In: Nogales, F.F. (eds) The Human Yolk Sac and Yolk Sac Tumors. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77852-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77852-0_2

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