Ch 1: Finding your Inner Fish

Like many other students, i was seriously not looking forward to reading another book for summer. Especially one from a non-English or literature class. The first thing that made this book seem interesting me however, was the fact that it says that the human anatomy is related to that of a fish. When i opened the book, I was surprised that the text wasn't presented in a boring, monotone way. There was description and information, like Neil Shubin was trying to actually talk to you. I liked the way he described the relationship between planning and chance. You can plan something and go through with it, but its only by chance that you discover a fossil or something of value in the paleontology career.

Another interesting thing about him is that instead of classifying animals and fossils by their long actual names, he separates them into 2 very simple categories: A creature with a head and 2 eyes is part of the "Everythings." and then there is "everything with limbs". This makes it very easy and doesn't confuse me as much as if he used the actual scientific names given to animals.

You could feel the frustration that him and his team were having after each failed excavation of fossils on Ellesmere Island. Even after they thought they struck gold, all the fossils they found were already well known and documented fossils. His hard work paid off though, once he found the flat-headed fish and named it Tiktaalik (means Large Freshwater fish Inuktitut). This fish has bones that fins that contained bones that resembled a human.