YIF: Chapter 1

            This chapter does a great deal in mentioning the author’s, Neil Shubin, experience in fossil hunting and what they do to determine a great location for fossils which are the rocks’ age, sedimentary rocks (the types of rocks most ideal for preserving fossils), exposed rocks at the surface, and lastly serendipity. He explains how he used these four factors in his own expeditions, and he later describes the result of each expedition, how he was able to accomplish it, and what this tells us about the history of the evolution of limbed animals. His second expedition that he mentioned has the most relevance when talking about the Tiktaalik, a fish that he discovered in the Arctic, because this fish is an evolutionary intermediate between fish and primitive land-living animals, it is very important in understanding the evolution of humans. The most important conclusion that can be determined by analyzing this fish is determining how fish transitioned from living in water to living on land, which can be seen by analyzing its fins and head and shoulders and most of the rest of his body. This idea about the Tiktaalik was the most interesting to me because it was such a huge discovery and it involved so much to how reptiles and amphibians transitioned from fish which is just incredible. And what makes this discovery that much more amazing is that scientists predicted this type of fish would have existed and that they also were to give a relatively accurate period of time that this fish would have existed. This chapter makes the largest connection with the Big Idea of biology that is the process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life. I will use the Tiktaalik again to describe this connection. This connection is that this fish leads people to conclude to the origins of life diverge. Because one can easily see that different land animals have similar body builds, with the same types of bones but in different locations and sizes, it can be determined that they all evolved from the same primitive land animal, and this discovery of the Tiktaalik shows that land animals evolved from fish which raises a lot of questions about the origin of land-animals but also answers a lot. Finally an overall question that can sum up all of the ideas from the first chapter of Your Inner Fish is, “How can fossils of the past help with our present?”