Ch4. Teeth Everywhere

When if first started to read this chapter, I was not captivated and my mind occasionally wandered off. Shubin describes too much of his life story in the chapter, making it feel like I'm reading a biography instead of a book about tracing our origin to fishes. I didn't really care who the characters, such as Bill or Chuck, were, but I cared more about what they had discovered
Although disappointed after had reading the first half of the chapter, the second made up for it. Shubin's description of the origin of teeth came to me as a real surprise. I had already known before reading that teeth are actually hard bones, but these hard bones originated to eat others and not to protect themselves was surprising. "The first hard hydroxyapatite-containing body parts were teeth. Hard bones arose not to protect animals, but to eat them," (76). This quote really made me thinking, bones are something that protect, but they were originally used to kill? Now that shocked me. I also liked how Shubin describes the teeth as being a very important fossil that can tell what an animal's diet was. The shape of one's teeth influences what animals or plants they ate. It was also interesting to see that our teeth are actually made from interactions between layers of skin, just as how our hair is. The purpose of hair and teeth are much different, but to know that they are made the same way shows that they are linked.
I look forward to reading the next chapter, hopefully Shubin will speak less about his adventure and more about the science behind it.