This material is from the 4th edition of The Zebrafish Book. The 5th edition is available in print and within the ZFIN Protocol Wiki.

Modified from: Kimmel et al., 1995. Developmental Dynamics 203:253-310. Copyright © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Reprinted only by permission of Wiley-Liss, a subsidiary of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Fig. 1. Camera lucida sketches of the embryo at selected stages. The animal pole is to the top for the early stages, and anterior is to the top later, except for the two animal polar (AP) views shown below their side view counterparts for germ-ring and shield gastrulas. Face views are shown during cleavage and blastula stages. After shield stage, the views are of the embryo's left side, but before the shield arises one cannot reliably ascertain which side is which. Pigmentation is omitted.

Arrowheads indicate the early appearance of some key diagnostic features at the following stages: 1k-cell: YSL nuclei. Dome: the doming yolk syncytium. Germ ring: germ ring. Shield: embryonic shield. 75%-epiboly: Brachet's cleft. 90%-epiboly: blastoderm margin closing over the yolk plug. Bud: polster. 3-somite: third somite. 6-somite: eye primordium (upper arrow), Kupffer's vesicle (lower). 10-somite: otic placode. 21-somite: lens primordium. Prim-6: primordium of the posterior lateral line (on the dorsal side), hatching gland (on the yolk ball). Prim-16: heart. High-pec: pectoral fin bud. Scale bar: 250 µm.

(These sketches have been scanned at low resolution. You can obtain higher resolution sketches by clicking on the figure you want. Each high resolution file is approxiately 100-200 kb in size, so allow time for down-loading. The computer files are also available for downloading by holding down the "option" key (Mac) or "shift" key (PC) while clicking on the figure you want. If you would like printed copies of these figures, contact C. Kimmel kimmel@uoneuro.uoregon.edu.)

1-cell: 2-cell: 4-cell: 8-cell: 16-cell: 32-cell: 64-cell: 128-cell: 256-cell: 512-cell: 1k-cell: high: oblong: sphere: dome: 30%-epiboly: 50%-epiboly: germ ring: shield: 8h: 9h: 10h: 11h: 12h: 14h: 16h: 18h: 19.5h: 22h: 25h: 31h: 35h: 42h: 48h: 60h: 72h: