Neil Shubin Your Inner Fish Analysis
Your Inner Fish
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, delves into the questions of why the human body looks the way it does. Looking at the earliest forms of vertebrate life on land and even to the earliest forms of life on Earth we can trace the evolution of the human body. The creatures, from millions of years ago, have left us with a genetic a imprint that reveals how similar we truly are to the other creatures on Earth. Shubin tells the story of evolution by tracing the skeletal features and organs of the human body back millions of years by examining fossils and DNA, he shows us our inner fish, reptile, and monkey.
What does your inner fish look like? Starting with a human arm a great anatomist, Sir
Richard Owen, discovered that our arms, and legs, hands and …show more content…
The fish was named Eusthenopteron. This fossil had Owen’s one bone, two bone pattern in its fin skeleton (33), making it another clue to human’s ancient past. But, it was not until 2004 that Shubin and his colleagues found Tiktaalik, a fish with a wrist, elbow and shoulder composed with the same pattern like humans arms. Tiktaalik lived approximately 375 million years ago. Paleontologists say that Tiktaalik represents a transition between non-tetrapod vertebrates (fish) such as Panderichthys, known from fossils 380 million years old, and early tetrapods such as Acanthostega and
Ichthyostega, known from fossils that are 365 million years old. Tiktaalik is a mixture of primitive fish and derived tetrapod characteristics lead Shubin to characterize Tiktaalik as a fishpod
(Wilford). In the PBS video Neil Shubin states, “Here we had the first fish who could do push ups.” How did Tiktaalik become so different from other fish?Another notable difference in Tiktaalik is spiracles on the top of the head that suggest the creature had primitive lungs as well as gills. This may have led the development of a more robust ribcage, which is a key
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, delves into the questions of why the human body looks the way it does. Looking at the earliest forms of vertebrate life on land and even to the earliest forms of life on Earth we can trace the evolution of the human body. The creatures, from millions of years ago, have left us with a genetic a imprint that reveals how similar we truly are to the other creatures on Earth. Shubin tells the story of evolution by tracing the skeletal features and organs of the human body back millions of years by examining fossils and DNA, he shows us our inner fish, reptile, and monkey.
What does your inner fish look like? Starting with a human arm a great anatomist, Sir
Richard Owen, discovered that our arms, and legs, hands and …show more content…
The fish was named Eusthenopteron. This fossil had Owen’s one bone, two bone pattern in its fin skeleton (33), making it another clue to human’s ancient past. But, it was not until 2004 that Shubin and his colleagues found Tiktaalik, a fish with a wrist, elbow and shoulder composed with the same pattern like humans arms. Tiktaalik lived approximately 375 million years ago. Paleontologists say that Tiktaalik represents a transition between non-tetrapod vertebrates (fish) such as Panderichthys, known from fossils 380 million years old, and early tetrapods such as Acanthostega and
Ichthyostega, known from fossils that are 365 million years old. Tiktaalik is a mixture of primitive fish and derived tetrapod characteristics lead Shubin to characterize Tiktaalik as a fishpod
(Wilford). In the PBS video Neil Shubin states, “Here we had the first fish who could do push ups.” How did Tiktaalik become so different from other fish?Another notable difference in Tiktaalik is spiracles on the top of the head that suggest the creature had primitive lungs as well as gills. This may have led the development of a more robust ribcage, which is a key