The ability of unsegmented paraxial mesoderm from Japanese quail embryos to form somites was studied by culturing pieces of embryos, containing the segmental plates, on an agar medium. In the first experiments, two explants were prepared from each donor embryo. Both explants contained a segmental plate and neural tube, but only one contained notochord. The explants containing notochord formed 11.4 +/- 2.1 somites, while the explants without notochord formed 11.1 +/- 1.3 somites. It was concluded that explants containing Japanese quail segmental plates readily form somites in culture and that the continued presence of the notochord is not required for these somites to form. In a second series of experiments, one explant from each donor embryo contained neural tube and notochord along with the segmental plate, while the corresponding explant did not contain axial structures. The results, which were similar to those obtained in the first experiments, indicated that neither neural tube nor notochord is required for somitogenesis in vitro. Additional experiments demonstrated that bilateral symmetry extends to the unsegmented somite mesoderm, where there was a strong tendency for each segmental plate of a given embryo to form the same number of somites. It was also shown that over a three-fold range of segmental plate length, there was only a slight tendency for shorter segmental plates to make fewer somites. It was estimated that Japanese quail embryos having five to 21 pairs of somites have segmental plates that represent 11.3 +/- 2.9 prospective somites each.