Brilliant Adventures in Paleontology

books:

	• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Vintage) Neil Shubin Vintage, 2009 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 161 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Highest recommendation!

I love this book. Shubin has put quality time into it - and it shows.

I go back and re-read parts of it over and over.

I find it refreshing that Shubin doesn't try and take credit where it isn't due. It's a special book and everyone can learn something from it.

Neil: I anxiously await your next book. Thank you!

3.5 Billion Years in 231 Pages

Shubin's Your Inner Fish covers a lot of ground. As the title suggests, a good part of the book discusses the similarities between living creatures: in some ways, Shubin explains, we are very like fish. Of course, we are separated by fish by some hundreds of millions of years, which leaves a lot to discuss. The final chapter includes a brief but interesting discussion of how understanding our own evolutionary history can help us understand how and why we get sick. Those few pages left me wanting more. In addition to hard science, Shubin also includes some personal history, including the hunt for the fossil known as Tiktaalik, one of the first fish to make the transition to land.

This book reminds me, in some respects, of Richard Dawkins' excellent book, The Ancestor's Tale (but perhaps only because I have not read that much paleontology). Both books explain the evolution of the fascinating ancient creatures that are our great, great . . . great grandparents.

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Fun and easy to understand.

In fact I would suggest it for anybody still on the fence about evolution. If you don't believe in it, why are you reading this review? And if you do believe in it, then you already have this book anyway or plan to get it.
But if you are in doubt, if the idea of evolution seems strange, or even scary, Neil Shubin makes it easy, even fun, to understand. You will come to delight in the idea.
The chapters deal with the basic building blocks of life and how eyes, limbs, ears and such evolved from fish to mammals, and from mammals to primates, and well, to us. We ARE primates, after all.
Get it and enjoy it!

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Brilliant Adventures in Paleontology

Shubin writes an exciting story of his hunt for the missing link of fish to tetrapods. He follows that with a revealing survey of anatomical & biologic structures common in worms, fish, birds, tetrapods, & humans and how they progressed along the way. Anybody who thinks that homo sapiens are "special", "unique", or the apex of creation should reconsider that assumption. Forget decending from apes, we come from fish!
Well written & easily understood for the biology-challenged among us.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Details on a Major New Discovery included in a New Afterword

Why do we look the way we do? Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the ?fish with hands,? tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest?enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

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