Body plans and phylotypic stages

Later on, von Baer found that that phenomenon has a general validity. All animals can be divided into major groups - today called phyla - which are characterised by the fact that the animals of one group have a stage of embryonic development where all their embryos are strikingly similar. This stage of maximum morphological similarity 

The link between the two discoveries is the fact that the phyla defined by Cuvier, on the basis of the adult body plans, exactly correspond to the phyla defined by von Baer on the basis of the embryos phylotypic stages, a convergence that turns out to have a 

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