Dear future ISM teacher, Today I shall be writing to you about Neil Shubin’s book “Your Inner Fish”. In this book, the author, who is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, goes into a deep dive into how he believes that we humans have an ancestral connection to fish. He reveals how our human anatomy had once gone from fish swimming in the water to land-dwelling vertebrates that would eventually lead to mammals, including humans. In Shubin's investigation of this evolutionary topic of the interesting transition from once water to now land, he researches fossils such as the Tiktaalik roseae (Tiktaalik is a monospecific genus of extinct sarcopterygian from the Late Devonian Period, about 375 Mya, having many features akin to those of tetrapods). This fish shows features that are an …show more content…
In this book, a great use of scientific annotations is central to Shubin’s storytelling. The book shows a great deal of anatomy, paleontology, and evolutionary biology to go into full detail about the evolution of humans. All these different scientific genres allow the readers to get an idea of human origin. Shubin explains how the study of comparative anatomy of the similarities and differences within the body structure of different types of species allows some insight into our development as humans. For example, he shows the structure of the human hand is a direct descendant of the find of ancient fish, with similar bone arrangements that reveal our evolutionary lineage. Additionally, Shubin’s discussion of genetics and embryology demonstrates how our developmental processes mirror those of other vertebrates, reinforcing the deep evolutionary connections that span millions of years. Your Inner Fish raises several intriguing questions about our understanding of evolution. Before reading this book, I always thought that we humans evolved from