Eyes

So, I'm beginning to see a trend among the chapters that deal with senses. They all are fairly short. This is a trend that I definitely like. Well, now to the subject at hand. I found it pretty astounding that that larval salamanders' soft tissue fossilized just like bone or teeth. To see fossils like the ones Niel saw in China must have been an amazing moment for him. Especially the 160 million year old salamander fossil that still had an eye. That's crazy! What I liked most about this chapter is how the reader really got to see that archeologists don't learn about the history of creatures just from bones, but they use a complex system of inductive reasoning to reach a conclusion. This was seen in the way that Shubin came to the conclusion of color vision in monkeys millions of years ago, and why it was an adaptation that they acquired. I see this as an especially large accomplishment since he had no monkey eye fossils of which he could go off. He only used his knowledge of the change of the appearance of plants and current monkey eyes.