Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body | Neil Shubin | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

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Your Inner Fish: A...

	Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body Neil Shubin Pantheon, 2008 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik?the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006?tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest?enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

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Excellent Read

There are many aspects to the body that make us human. Limbs, eyes, stature, genetics. None of it just happened. And this is evident by looking at all those that have come before us. By clearly showing how evolution is decent with modification, Neil Shubin shows how we can better understand the whys and wherefores of our own bodies by looking at the structure of simpler organisms, namely fish. An excelent example (to me) was the examination of the cranial nerves. I remember them from my anatomy class as seemingly tangled and I couldn't understand why they were so random. But by looking at embryology, fish, and many other aspects of comparative vertebrate anatomy, I now understand how beautifully arranged they really are.

Shubin examines many examples like this, showing how the fossil record show evolutionary history, and how many of these conclusions have been drawn in his field. Included are examples of how body plans form, limbs form, teeth end up in the mouth (my 4 year old loved this chapter and insisted I read the whole thing aloud to him), and how the ear is formed.

The book is engaging, entertaining, and informative. The author strikes an excellent balance between not talking over the audiences head and not dumbing down the information. Recommended for anyone interested in evolution, paleontology, body plans, and examining many of the missing links that have been discovered.

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Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

This is a brief but excellent book explaining how the fossil record is supported via modern science - genetics, DNA sequencing, molecular biology and the like. Although a bit slow in the start, it gives numerous examples of science in the 19th and 20th centuries, scientific progress has both proven and dis-proven scientific theory, and how often full understanding was hampered by lack of tools and technology. This is a must read for anyone interested in evolution, the scientific method (as differentiated from philosophy)and a high-level understanding of the amazing confluence of sciences now available thanks to computing and modern technology. An excellent read!

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The family of life on Earth

While this book offers an excellent presentation of evolution, the surprise for many readers is likely to be the realization of just how closely related life is on this planet. Most people, even those who are not in denial about evolution, probably do not feel particularly close to fish, for example. After reading this book, however, they will.

A few years ago I interviewed Jack Horner, the famed paleontologist, and he said that birds are dinosaurs; we just gave them a different name.

After reading this book, I wonder if we are not fish, called by another name.

I highly recommend this book.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

I also recommend:

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

Evolution Boxed Set

The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans

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On the physical book itself

The physical condition of this book is great. It is a good looking, well sized hardcover with clear and easy-on-the-eyes print, and the pages themselves have a nice feel and look to them, all in all a great book.

As to what is written within you merely need to look at the other reviews.

Highly recommended.

It Tiktaaliks all the right boxes

I purchased this book on impulse as it was evident at a glance just how well edited and put together it was. I learned a great deal and my only complaint is that the cover of the UK hardback was not half as nice as the one featuring the outstanding fossil - Tiktaalik.

This is a vertebrate paleontology book with strong underlying genetic, evolutionary and anatomical themes. If anything the book kept me asking more questions and it filled in the gaps of the following series -
Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Acanthostega, Ichthyostega with the description of the discovery of Tiktaalik. One more star in the VP pantheon representing a missing link in the ancestry of creatures that culminated in modern vertebrates. In a lighter vein, the book showed me just how close I was to a shark or a ray or even to a sponge. Yes, this book made the genetic linkages between organisms and their developmental heritages so perspicacious.

It was easy to read, reasonably well illustrated and above all quite a simple rendition of a complex subject. In the end, it humbles the reader into acknowledging his/her affinity with the natural world. That we are not creatures apart from it.

I expect the editors helped erase out back slapping gestures on the heros of this story such as Jarvik, Clack and Romer - that would however, perhaps be another story - as would more information on lungfish, the coelocanth ... this is a very fishy sort of book and now more than ever, I need to know my kinship to them.

In the end a simple phylogenetic framework is indicated and how we arrive at branching trees that describe our ancestry. I hope this book stimulates more work into conservation and taxonomic research which is very poorly funded.

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