Talk to Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body like its author wrote you back.
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What it argues
Your Inner Fish is paleontologist Neil Shubin's account of how understanding the deep evolutionary history of vertebrates reveals the origins of the human body. The book moves between fieldwork — particularly the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, the 375-million-year-old fish-tetrapod transitional fossil — and the anatomy lab where Shubin teaches first-year medical students. The connecting theme is that the quirks, vulnerabilities, and apparent oddities of human anatomy make sense only in light of where we came from.
Shubin opens with Tiktaalik, which his team discovered in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic after years of searching in rocks of exactly the predicted age. The fossil has a flat head with forward-facing eyes, a neck (the first vertebrate to have one), and fins with an internal bone structure that corresponds to the human arm: one bone (humerus), two bones (radius and ulna), then smaller bones leading to digits. Finding Tiktaalik was a confirmation of evolutionary prediction, and Shubin explains both the search strategy and what the find revealed.
What it gets right
- 1.
Tiktaalik roseae was found in rocks of the exact age and type where evolutionary theory predicted a fish-tetrapod transitional fossil would be. Its discovery is a model of how evolutionary theory generates testable predictions.
- 2.
The human arm — one bone, two bones, wrist bones, fingers — has the same skeletal plan as the fin of a 375-million-year-old fish. The bones are homologous, not analogous.
- 3.
The bones of the human middle ear (malleus and incus) are modified jaw bones. In reptiles, the equivalent structures are still part of the jaw. The fossil record documents this transition in detail.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Neil Shubin is a paleontologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as associate dean of academic affairs. He is known for leading the team that discovered Tiktaalik roseae in 2004, one of the most important transitional fossils in the vertebrate record. Shubin's research focuses on the evolutionary and developmental origins of major body plan features. In addition to Your Inner Fish, he is the author of The Universe Within and Some Assembly Required. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011.
