Chapter Two: Getting A Grip

Chapter two was not as big a success as chapter one was for me. I was intrigued by Shubin’s way of telling his story and I was interested in finding out about his discoveries. The beginning of the chapter interested me when he was dissecting the body and was emotionally captivated by the body’s hand. But after the first few pages I started to become lost and it was difficult for me to stay focused. I want to read about his accomplishments and how his knowledge and emotions bring him to find amazing discoveries. But as a read on and on, it seemed that he was only listing other expeditions that had no back-story to them at all. They were just a list of connections, which is what I feared this book would be. He kept switching the topics and species from Eusthenopteron to Acanthostega to Ichthyostega and on and on and on. I really couldn’t remember by the end of the chapter which was which or why they were significant. It wasn’t until the last couple of pages of the chapter that I was interested again. I was intrigued by the connections of Tiktaalik and how it was able to do things like push ups. I liked that Shubin started to return to his style of writing that was in the first chapter; he explains the bone structure of Tiktaalik by showing that the creature could do a push up. This gives us a clear idea of how Tiktaalik is like us. But I still feel that this chapter lacked the emotions and excitement of the expeditions that the first chapter displayed.