Chapter 4 - Teeth Everywhere

Chapter 4 was very informative and intriguing because the topic being taught was easy to understand. I really enjoyed this chapter because Shubin took a small topic that people would never care about and turned it into something interesting and worth reading. So teeth, I never knew they were this important. I learned that teeth are the hardest part of our body and have a very significant role of biting, dicing, and slicing. I found this quote very captivating "Yet the little tooth contains so much of our connection to the rest of life that is virtually impossible to understand our bodies without knowing teeth" (pg. 60). This explains that teeth and all the other parts Shubin mentioned in the previous chapters like ancient rocks, bones, and DNA all tie together and connect to our body. I just love how Shubin writes new and interesting facts I never knew about because he wants to keep the reader on track and teach new things. Other than teeth being used for eating and smiling, they are useful for other things. One fact I didn't know was that teeth could explain an animal's diet which was very engaging because it can reveal what kind of animal it was, whether it was a meat eater or not and so many other things.

I really appreciate how dedicated and persevered Shubin is towards his work. Even when he fails he never looses hope, and makes the most of his failures by trying even harder the next time. Shubin's colleague Chuck explains to him "to look for something different, something that had the texture of bone not rock, something that glistened like teeth, something that looked like an arm bone, not a piece of sandstone" (pg. 64). After this little pep talk from Chuck, Shubin was able to distinguish between bones and rocks (which were special bones and which were ordinary rocks) this helped him find bones that were relevent for his research. Shubin takes us with him on his journey and whenever his team is successful, the audience feels happy and when they are unsuccessful, we feel sorrow and sympathy. Shubin and his team were successful and achieved their goal of finding an important fossil. The fossil they found was a reptile with a tooth-to tooth occlusion, the fossil was half mammal, half reptile. I was happy that Shubin and his team were able to find something interesting after so much hard work and struggles they had to endure.
-Sasha Kapoor