Hamburger-Hamilton Staging Series (1951)

In 1951 Viktor Hamburger and Howard Hamilton created an embryonic staging series from a combination of photographs and drawings from other researchers. The Hamburger-Hamilton stages are a sequence of images depicting 46 chronological stages in chick development. The images begin with a fertilized egg and end with a fully developed chick. The Hamburger-Hamilton staging series was produced in order to replace a previous chick staging series created in 1900. The earlier attempt lacked specific details and staged the chick embryo by using only morphological characteristics. As chicks were, and still remain, model organisms for experimental embryology, it was important to create a staging series with descriptions for determining the approximate age of a developing chick embryo.