Comparative anatomy
Edward Tyson is regarded as the founder of modern comparative anatomy. He is credited with determining that whales and dolphins are, in fact, mammals. Also, he concluded that chimpanzees are more similar to humans than to monkeys because of their arms. Marco Aurelio Severino also compared various animals, including birds, in his "Zootomia democritaea", one of the first works of comparative anatomy. In the 18th and 19th century, great anatomists like George Cuvier, Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley revolutionized our understanding of the basic build and systematics of vertebrates, laying the foundation for Charles Darwin's work on evolution. An example of a 20th-century comparative anatomist is Victor Negus, who worked on the structure and evolution of the larynx. Until the advent of genetic techniques like DNA sequencing, comparative anatomy together with embryology were the primary tools for understanding phylogeny, as exemplified by the work of Alfred Romer.
Kazimierz Kostanecki
Professor Kazimierz Kostanecki (25 December 1863, Myszaków – 11 January 1940, Sachsenhausen concentration camp) was a Polish physician, anatomist, and cytologist. Since 1892 he was a professor of comparative and descriptive anatomy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków under the military partitions of Poland. He held his post until 1935 in the reborn Second Polish Republic. During this time he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and between 1913 and 1916 was the Rector of the Jagiellonian University. He is considered the father of the Kraków school of anatomy due to his many scientific discoveries and accomplishments.