Chapter 5 Getting Ahead

Shubin started off this chapter discussing anatomy. He went ahead and explained the structure of the human head, including all the intricate parts that make it up. Shubin talked about the trigeminal and facial nerves that serve different functions in our head. He later mentioned that "Nobody starts life with a head" but develops one after a sperm and egg come together to make a single cell. Shubin introduced the four different arches that made up the fundamental blueprint of heads that made it easier for me to understand the complicated structure. I learned that the organization of our nerves, as well as our vertebra, are all segmental. I realized the importance of embryo in order to study these different segments because they disappear as we become adults. What interested me was how every head on every animal from a shark to a human shares those four arches in development. I was also fascinated when I discovered that worms can tell us something about the origin of parts of our bodies. It was very interesting to see that those little worms could share gill arches with humans, who are far more complex. I'm excited to see how not only our teeth, genes, and limbs, and now our head structures, are similar to those of other, simpler organisms.