Chapter One and Two Blog

Well to start of I apologize for not posting a blog last Saturday on chapter one. I just received my book in the mail this morning.

CHAPTER ONE BLOG: Wait, My Great Grandpa X 1000000 WAS A FISH?
When I first heard about this assignment I reacted the same exact way everyone else did “oh man we have to READ a book….. ABOUT FISH?!” But I’d like to say I regret having ever had this reaction because the book is actually very interesting. Shubin begins his book by illustrating to his audience that he is in fact an average human being like the rest of us. He talks about his profession which seems like a bit of a bore fest but it in fact is quite interesting because as chapter one progresses he clarifies how much his profession, professor of Human Anatomy, impacts his field of study and vice versa. When one thinks of human anatomy the first thing that would pop into ones mind is, well, the human body. Shubin on the other hand took the human body to an entire new level, he took it to the Mesozoic era. Many wonder how man came to be and so they sit there and think about it, Shubin did so as well. He did in fact sit and think about how man came to be, at fossil sites of course. He excavated fossils in rocks that were at least 375 million years old in order to find our ancestors. What we originated from, possibly your grandpa. Well as he excavated through different rocks from different location, he categorized every one of his findings in the categories of: “Everything, Everything with limbs, Everything with limbs, hair and breast, and Everything with all of the things listed before that walk on two legs”. These categorize allowed his readers to understand the process of how man came to be. Now even though different categorize are present, illustrating how man evolved from fish to man, some still thought of his theory as fishy but Shubin then reinforced his findings with the finding of the Siksagiaq, or in other terms, the Tiktaalik. The Tiktaalik conveyed how fish began evolving into amphibians, the had shoulders, elbows, and wrist inside their webbing. To me, this discovery is amazing because before I only heard about man evolving from ape, who knew that ape evolved from fish?
This then makes me wonder what will we evolve into.

Oh and as an additional and final thought, I wonder if his writing style helps convey his meaning because he talks about many excavations which involve trial and error. Did he include this, not to act as a filler but to illustrate how evolution works? That throughout time many species have evolved into different things and died because they were clearly the failures and we survived and were the product because we were the successes?

CHAPTER TWO BLOG: YEAH, My Grandpa X 1000000 Could Do Push Ups!
Now, since chapter one was the basic introduction of how man evolved from fish, Shubin then gets even more detailed with how they evolved in chapter two. He begins by yet again talking about the Tiktaalik and how it has parts of the arm, which are commonly, and if you’re normal, found in humans. His initial description of his profession now further comes into play because he talks about the arm, or wing, or fin, anatomy of other animals. His theory is also then further seen as valid because he gives examples of how our arm evolved throughout time throughout different species. For example, bats have an arm like structure resembling mans, except with longer fingers. I think its interesting that he explained how we developed by focusing on the hand rather than the skull size or location of each fish. Why do I find this interesting? Well I find this interesting because the location of the fish could explain the different shades of skin color and/or the different customs that are seen today. Since he focused on the arm and wrist, I thought that it was amazing that our ancestors could do push-ups in order to prowl the oceans depths to hunt for their prey and/or possibly friends. If it was not for them who knows how our bodies and lives would be shaped. This then brings another thought into my head, If what our ancestors did ,who knows how many millions of years ago, impacts us today, how will our actions affect the future?

So in conclusion, I AGREE with Chrisantha Pinto statement ”Human anatomy is like a giant jigsaw puzzle and they're still working on putting us together.”

- Daniel Sanchez