Chapter 2

By looking at the title page of chapter two "Getting a Grip" i assumed that it would be mostly about the Tiktaalik on how it walked and the use of its hand. Neil Shubin started the chapter with the human body and ended with Tiktaalik's bone structure. I liked how Shubin asks a question and then answers it right afterwards. This helped me by understanding each important question. The titles of chapter two Getting a Grip, Seeing the Fish, and Finding Fish Fingers and Wrists revealed an image of an fish's structure. My favorite chapter was finding fish fingers because it described a lot about the Tiktaalik and how it uses it fingers and how they are.When Shubin showed side images of animals for example the human arm, theropod dinosaur, seal, bird, lizard, pterosaur, penguin bat, humpback whale, which showed me that all these animals have an humerus. I was amazed when i read the caption and saw the picture that animals and humans do have some similarities. Shubin's writing style is different because he uses italicized words to describe important words that would be relevant to a chapter. I was surprised when the author has said that the Tiktaalik could do push ups like us because they had a flat hand and they had a wrist. I never actually realized that the Tiktaalik relates a lot to a humans structure. When the author started to talk about the tantalizing fish i was at shock, because i had never seen a fish's fin that big. Therefore, i learned that Shubin is trying to connect fish with human by defining the similarities between the two creatures. As a result chapter two was much better then chapter one because in chapter two Shubin went more in depth with the description of fish.

-Alveena Memon