My Inner Fish : A Journey Into The 3.5 Billion Year History

We look back on history to look at the anatomy and physiology of the human to see what it must have been like and compare that to the chimpanzees. Like the chimpanzees humans used to have their skin covered with hair but when it was exposed to sunlight, the hair must have fallen off. Which leads to the question “When did we lose our hair?” (169).

Biological Knowledge = == == == ==

It’s an alligator! It’s a crocodile! It’s a lizard! It’s.. a fish? All educated guesses even preschoolers can notice. The discovery of Tiktaalik has given many scientists something to think about. The first being that humans may after all be closely related to fish. When first hearing this theory, for anyone it is hard to believe. Humans have fingers and fishes have fins! They have gills and we have lungs! Many things point towards the fact that humans have nothing in common with fish until one looks at the bone structure of each and how exceptionally similar they are. The reason for the similarity is because both species share a common ancestor.

The Ted X Talk, Tracking ancient diseases using…plaque, with Christina Warinner as the speaker focused on explaining one innovative way to move past the challenges associated with studying diet, infection and immunity of our ancestors. Warinner is an archaeological geneticist at the Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich. She studies how humans co-evolved with their environment, diets and disease by looking at the skeletal and mummified remains of ancient humans. In her Ted X Talk given in Long Beach, California in March 2012 she provided explanations for the difficulties researchers are faced with, the description of the new implementation of Warinner and her team and the results that were found, Warinner shares with others how the evolutionary history of health and human disease is being investigated.

As the book progresses, we are introduced to the three most influential people on western biological thought that emerged from ancient Greece, and the classical world. First came Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.) who was revered as the “moral philosopher” rather than a “natural philosopher,” as his ideas contributed towards two jurisdictions of thought – philosophy and natural science. Although he left little proof of his written accounts, his ideology has made it through centuries of history in the form of “Socratic dialogues” by his pupil, Plato (429 – 347 B.C.). Plato contributed to the transcription, of the dialogues between himself and Socrates and the members of Athenian

DNA contains the information that builds our bodies from a single fertilized egg. Cellular diversity gives rise to our tissues and organs, with distinct shapes and functions. Yet, all cells in our body contain exactly the same DNA. The resolution to this apparent paradox lies in the fact that different pieces of DNA are turned on in every cell, and these pieces are called genes. When a gene is turned on, It makes a protein that affects what the cell looks like and how it behaves. Our bodies are a composition of individual genes turning on and off inside each cell during our development. We use this information about gene “switches” to compare the activity of different genes, with the end goal of assessing what kinds of changes are involved in the origin of new organs. For limbs, we catalogue the genetic differences between fins and mammalian limbs. Then, we study the function of these genes in embryos and do experiments to manipulate genes, mutate specimens, and observe the responses to these changes. Each gene has a distinctive sequence, and using molecular tools, researches can scan another species’ DNA for identical sequences. It turns out that the DNA “recipe” to build upper arms, forearms, wrists, and digits is identical in every creature that has

The book Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is an interesting novel that shows the evolution of some of our major structures through time. We all know about evolution and the monkeys but we never really looked in on evolution through “our inner fish”. The book was appealing because it helps to understand how we have come to be with some of the parts of our bodies we take for granted, like how we got our developed smell or our advanced color vision. Your Inner Fish is a good way to jump into the evolution of our ancestors and become more knowledgeable about where we came from.

They provide a background to our native history, present a real-life problem, which connects back to the history they supply, and offer a solution. They constantly refer to the theory of evolution and natural selection. Questions about how the human mind evolved have been around ever since Charles Darwin presented his of natural selection in 1859 with The Origin of Species. He hypothesized about where human thought and emotion came from, but his data concerned the bodies (not the minds) of distant human relatives. At around the same time, Gregor Mendel discovered that characteristics were passed from parents to offspring through genes. In 1953, their discoveries were combined with the James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA: genes were shown to be patterns of DNA that serve as blueprints for the organism’s physical traits. A few decades later, evolutionary biologists began to connect how genes translate not only to physical traits but also into human behavior. However, few actually use the results of evolutionary psychology to improve

Hilde Mangold looked beyond the genetic makeup of embryos to find a small patch of tissue that was able to direct other cells to form an entire body plan. This is called the organizer. According to Shubin, “... many scientists consider Mangold’s work to be the single most important experiment in the history of embryology.” However, in the 20th century, scientists decided to try to understand why embryos of different species look the same and figure out more information, even beyond the organizer. Neil shares that scientists discovered a sequence of DNA within a few specific genes. The book shares more information on this sequence, stating, “ This little sequence is called a homeobox. The eight genes that contain the homeobox are called Hox genes.” Eventually scientists realized that the Hox genes are present in every animal with a body. Shubin tells of how hox genes establish proportions of our bodies too. They are responsible for the different regions of our head, chest, and lower back. Hox genes are involved with the development of different organs, limbs, genitalia, and guts. Shubin states that changes in our hox genes bring about changes in the way our bodies are put together. The similarities that are revealed between the basic body structures of different animals and creatures show how immensely diverse evolution

The book Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is a journey into 3.5-billion-year history of the human body. The book is an entertaining and useful novel that demonstrates the evolution of some of our major structures through time. By analyzing fossils and DNA, the author shows us that our hands truly resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and that major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria. The book takes us on a remarkable expedition in which it will show us our inner fish, reptile and

“Forbidden archeology” is the terminology used to describe the alternative theories that are held against mainstream science in regards to human origins and the history of both us and our ancestors. Within forbidden archeology is scientist and specialist on the subject Cremo, who suggests that there is adequate proof that modern man did not evolve as previously thought from

I attended the talk on Your Inner Fish by Dr. Neil Shubin on Thursday the 6th of April. The talk itself was based off the book Your Inner Fish, that Dr. Neil Shubin wrote in ______ year. In the beginning of the talk he stressed the idea that to understand the human species it very much helps to understand animals as well. The anatomy of our own bodies and the understanding of what everything does can also be seen in other animals like fish. He believes that we are the cumulation of millions of years of evolution and that we had to come from somewhere. Most of his talk addressed findings that support the idea that animals formed from fish to animals like tetrapod’s and then to something like us. He and other colleagues discovered the Tiktaalik, which was a creature who had both elements of fish and amphibians. This was amazing find for the world of paleontology and shows amazing evidence for the world of animal behavior

Although this project is notably different to the others, it still contains topics relevant to my career to date including human evolution and bioinformatics which are other fields in which I have an interest in developing a career. Goals and concluding

Abstract evolution has occurred in humans for millions of years; however, in a modern society many scientists and evolutionists are now debating whether or not it is still occurring, and if it follows the same rules. With all of the new technology humans have created, some experts believe that humans have essentially conquered nature, and no further evolutionary changes will occur. Still, others hold opposing views; some experts believe that evolution is still occurring, but modern societal advancements have changed the rules. These experts say that the changes in evolution are a result of recent medical advancements that allow doctors to perpetuate genes that would not have lasted years ago. Additionally, others maintain that evolution is

“Although we are all members of a single species, we differ from one another in such visible traits as the color of our skin and the shape of our noses, and in biochemical factors such as our blood types and our susceptibility to certain diseases” (Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, 2013, p. 34). To understand human physical development and evolution one has to understand biological anthropology as the focus on humans as biological organisms. Biological anthropologist conduct research, and form techniques of modern molecular biology to learn about human variation and how it relates to different environment humans lived in as well as their conditions.