In this chapter i was surprisingly touched about how Shubin when doing his first dissection felt rather ready and prepared until he saw the hand which he called the signature of humans, us, who we are. Even despite making the first initial cut on the body and picking and cutting at the organs. Personally I would have just made a connection with the whole body itself or if we had to cut a cadaver open, the heart.
Also as Shubin uses this as a start point, he then talks about Owen's arm bone patterns. As Shubin describes and delineates the bones of other very different animals with very similar arm pattern: one bone, two bone, lotsa blobs and five toes, makes me ponder on the true idea of a divine being, if this was just full on evolution just as Shubin made the connection as well.
What I also found quite surprising was the fact that the Tiktaalik was able to perform push-ups, something quite impossible for the normal fish. With its shoulder, elbow, and wrist, just like the human arm, they had the capability of bending its elbows, maybe helping it get out of the water, as Shubin points out that in the sea there were many predators that were up to sixteen feet long, a fish eat fish world.
Throughout all the similar fish such as the Eusthenopteron, , the sentence which really brought the whole point in this section to me is how Shubin said "There isn't just a single fish inside of our limbs. There is a whole aquarium" (41). These sentences not only helped me understand why there were so many different fishes that had different types of body changes, but also made a real impact on me; I never really thought it made sense that we came from just one fish.
-Kevin Chun
I agree that perhaps their ability to bend its elbow helped them to get out of the water. The only reason I can come up with for the fish getting out of the water is to avoid predators since you mentioned "there were many predators that were up to sixteen feet long, a fish eat fish world".
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