Chapter 2

I'm not going to lie, this chapter was so much more interesting to me than the first chapter. My fellow classmates may disagree because I read many posts about how they were disappointed by this chapter, but I loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed Shubin beginning this chapter explaining his experience with dissecting a human body. I totally empathized with him when he got deeply emotional about the cadaver after seeing its hand. After I read, "...it is a signature for who we are and what we can attain. Our ability to grasp, to build, and to make our thoughts real lies inside the complex of bones, nerves, and vessels." it really hit me. What would we do without all the complex little bones working together inside our hands? We couldn't make a pb&j sandwich if we wanted to, flip through the channels on tv, or even hold hands with another person. It was like my "aha!" moment. I also found Owen's discovery (one bone, two bones, lotsa blobs, and digits pattern) to be very intriguing because it didn't apply to humans only; it applied to dinosaurs, birds, and surprisingly, fish. He mentioned Tiktaalik once more in this chapter and I'm starting to realize how that discovery really bridges the gap between fish in water and on land. By the way, I think Tiktaalik is a pretty cool fish because it was capable of doing push-ups. :) When I read that, I immediately pictured a fish doing a push-up and thought it was just about the cutest thing ever.