A body plan, Bauplan (pl. German: Baupläne), or ground plan is a set of morphological features common to many members of a phylum of animals. The vertebrates...

the phylotypic progression: a basis for the stability of a vertebrate Bauplan and the evolution of morphologies through heterochrony". Development. Supplement:...

that adaptive modifications in an organism's parts were all relative to a Bauplan, an idealized, common archetype. Robert J. Richards suggests that Versuch...