Let's Get Physical :]

Tiktaalik does pushups? Woah! What I found really interesting about this chapter was the relationship between the human hand structure, and the fish's. Owen's theory of "one hand-two hands-lotsa blobs" really made me understand how the human hand relates to Tiktaalik's. I agree with Briana when she says that Shubin concentrates mainly on the hand. This chapter really sets the stage for what’s to come in the next chapters. Shubin talks about the hand, and how it's structure came to be. Tiktaalik's head "is as wide as a basketball" and that makes it vividly clear that the fish was a giant predator. The streams, as he puts it, were a vicious place to be, in a fish-eat-fish situation. I was doing my bio notes the other day on predation and competition, and I learned that competition occurs in communities where there is an abundance of a species. I didn’t think that competition would exist in a world that was just coming about, which really got me by surprise. Plus I thought it was interesting that Tiktaalik was a pioneer in amphibious creatures. I’m excited to see what other interesting thing’s Shubin throws out to us in the next chapter.


, Anany