Chapter Two: Getting a Grip

Chapter Two was sort of interesting; It reminded me of many things.

In the beginning Shubin said " will spend several months taking a human body apart layer by layer, organ by organ, all as a way to learn tens of thousands of new names and body structures (28). This reminds me of when we did a pig disection in Mr. Tisor's class. It was a great learning experience although we did not learn tens of thousands of new names, it was worthwhile.
It was fascinating how Owens theory of "One-bone, two-bone, lotsa blobs" pertains to many other animals and Shubin gives many examples. It also reminds me of the other movie we watched on Darwin and Owen about evolution.

And ohmygosh lung-fish...Fishes have lungs!! I thought fishes have gills.? :)

People thought Oliver the chimp was the missing link, our closest ancestors. What Shubin does is he takes us back in time when it was only fishes. He goes back to our far far far far ancestors rather than our closest ancestors which is really cool.

It was weird how they found fins that work like our joints and it is funny how the Tiktaalik can drop and give us twenty. I thought that was hilarious. Shubin said " Bend your wrist back and forth. Open and close your hand. When you do this, you are using joints that first appeared in the fins of fish like Tiktaalik (41). I was surprised that these joints appeared in a fish. I thought about it after actually doing the exercise; I have joints that a fish had before...!

Shubin takes us through the book like if its a show or a tour and I'm excited to see what chapter three: Handy Genes reveals.