Neil Shubin Your Inner Fish Analysis

3. What did further examination of Tiktaalik’s fins reveal about the creature and its’ lifestyle?

Ankle bones and tarsal [foot] bones are the most diagnostic elements of the artiodactyls (Gingerich et al., 2), meaning that these bones are the most telling bones when distinguishing what group of animals a fossil may have come from. The presence of these two types of bones together in Gingerich’s discovery suggests that this primitive whale indeed could have been related to the hippopotamus. The skeletons of these animals contain similar bones; therefore both are thought to be artiodactyls. In a recent article in Science, Kenneth D. Rose, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says, “While ankles from primitive ancient whales have been discovered before, these are the first that are well-preserved enough to provide clues about whale ancestry” (Braun, 3). Paleontologists strongly believe that the bones of this discovery are all from the same animal. According to Gingerich, “No other mammalian specimens were found in the vicinity; all (fossils) are similar in size, color, and preservation; and no parts are duplicated” (3). Since no other animals were found in this same location, there was no chance that the discovered bones could have mixed with another fossil.

Sometimes our everyday experiences can strike us in ways that will influence our thinking in ways that might forever alter the way that we view our lives. In the short story “Fish Story,” Rick Bass primarily uses conflict, symbols, and the changes in a character to present a central theme reflecting the inevitability of our maturing thoughts and growing responsibilities that come incrementally with age. Gullason (1982) shares, “A short story represents a prose narrative usually concerned with a single aspect of personality changing or revealed as the result of conflict” (p. 222). We might interestingly find both of these dynamics within our weekly discussion’s short story assignment. Pigg (2017) explains, “The theme of a work of fiction is as much a creation of readers as it is for the writer because the user’s knowledge and beliefs play a part in determining the theme(s) they will recognize” (Attend Topic 4 Unit 2 [Video]). The writer of this week’s short story was likely to have known the theme that he intended to communicate while also recognizing the diversity of human thinking that gives us a myriad of perspectives. The “’Fish Story’s’ narrator is a 10-year-old boy in the early 1960’s living in rural Texas with parents who run a service station while their customer brings a 86 pound catfish creating a task to keep the fish alive until time to cook it” (Bass, 2009, pp. 1-2). As we recall our childhoods, most can likely remember how our imagination and fantasies began to collide with the realities of life, and this overreaching concept might allude to the theme of this piece of work. The narrator tells us how “He grew dizzy in the heat and from the strange combination of the unblinking monotony and utter fascination of his task until the trickling from the water hose seemed to be saturating and inflating the clouds as one would water a garden” (Bass, 2009, p. 2). As the narrator embraces the mundane task, his daydreams seem to symbolize the innocence of his youth. Later the story’s narrator “speaks less of childhood than of the general nature of the world in which we live, while contemplating that those days were different – we had more time for such thoughts, that time had not yet been corrupted”

Fish Magic is a combination of a charming scene decorated with vibrant colors to make one of the most famous paintings. The painting by Paul Klee has evoked multiple emotions in the audience, as it has it is full of aura. The Fish Magic by Klee was completed during his prime years as an artist before he died of scleroderma. The painting has however remained to be one of the pieces which sparked the creativity of the painter and infused a different level of skills to create a new figure.

The book begins by talking about bones and fossils. It explains how much scientist know about the past, and what type of fossil they were looking for. They had a fossil from 185 million years ago that was fully fish, and also a fossil from 165 years ago that was full amphibian. They were looking for a fossil in the middle to fill in the holes. A fossil in between these time periods would help us to understand how fish began to evolve to

Evolution is one of the most important factors when looking at history. A crucial moment in evolutionary process is speciation. Fortunately, we have the fossil record of a transitional species called tiktaalik. Tiktaalik was the transitional species of sea creature that would evolve into a land creature. It was found on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian arctic and is believed to be around 383 million years old (Class Lecture).

The author and his colleagues specifically chose to focus on 375 million year old rocks in their search for fossils because this was the time frame that provided fish that would be useful to study from. The 385 million year old rocks provided fish that look too similar to the ones we have now and the 365 million year old rocks have fossils that don’t resemble fish. The 375 million year old rocks, however, provide fossils that show the transition between fish and land living animals.

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.

To maintain life, organisms must be able to convert energy from one form to another. For example, in the process of photosynthesis, algae, plants, and photosynthetic prokaryotes use the energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water to glucose and oxygen (a waste product).

To understand how this pattern happens, scientists take a look at embryos. Sometimes they interfere with the development to see what occurs when things go wrong. Scientists use chicken eggs to study this. Just by adding a dab of vitamin A on a chicken embryo, you will get a mirror image of the embryo. The patch of tissue is called ZPA.

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.

The author and his colleagues chose to focus on 375 million year old rocks in their search for fossils because amphibians that look dissimilar to fish were discovered in 365 million year old rocks, while fish without amphibian characteristics were discovered in 385 million year old rocks. Thus, it is possible that the evolutionary intermediary, or the “missing link” between fish and amphibians, would be discovered in 375 million year old rocks, between the two time periods. The rocks examined were sedimentary in composition, as the gradual and relatively gentle formation of sedimentary rock under conditions of mild pressure and low heat are conducive to the fossilization of animal remains. Sedimentary rock is also often formed in rivers and seas, where animals are likely to live. This site provides a resource that describes means by which fossils are formed and how the fossil record may be interpreted, and shows some examples of fossils demonstrating evolution through geological periods: http://www.fossilmuseum.net/fossilrecord.htm. In 2004, Shubin and his colleagues were looking for fossils on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada. This location was chosen because of its lack of human development, as well as of obstructing natural formations and life forms such as trees, which

Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish, is an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and professor of anatomy who discovered the perfect transitional organism between fish and amphibians, thereby emphasizing the concept of common descent. Common descent is an idea that is accepted because the evidence is conclusive and has been supported for such a long period of time in scientific papers that it needs no support in present day’s society. Shubin’s overall thesis for Your Inner Fish is that all animals are related because our bodies are based on simple evolutionary changes to already existing systems, seeing as the inhabitants of this world are simply variations of different themes all shared by these very dwellers. This theory is supported by Shubin’s discovery of Tiktaalik, as it is the earliest living thing with a neck. Additionally, through the assumption that we are not direct descendants of Tiktaalik and that we are distantly related cousins, common descent is emphasized (180). What makes this a compelling thesis is that the evidence Shubin uses tells the readers a lot about their bodies and essentially gives a lesson on the basics

The fossil record gives reviews of the past that, when gathered, diagram a scene of formative change over the span of the last four billion years. The photograph might be spread in spots and might have bits missing, yet fossil affirmation doubtlessly exhibits that life is old and has changed over the drawn out stretches of time ("Fossil Evidence", 2015). Fossils of wiped out species have been contrasted with cutting edge species and have demonstrated likenesses in their characteristics. There have been situations where fossils have been mixed up to be that of a current reptile, when truly it was that of a terminated dinosaur, indicating similarities in the two species. Fossils additionally demonstrate the movement of species crosswise over drawn out stretches of time, implying that the shape or structure of an animal groups might have changed after some time. Embryology, the investigation of the improvement of the life systems of a life form to its grown-up structure, gives confirmation to development as fetus arrangement in broadly disparate gatherings of living beings has a tendency to be rationed (Evidence of Evolution - Boundless Open Textbook, 2015). There are samples of this in people, as in when an infant is in the womb of its mom it has gill openings (that vanish during childbirth) like that in fish. This proposed people might have a typical predecessor with an amphibian creature or types of fish. Embryology has demonstrated that some normal qualities are just in early advancement for a few animal types, however keep going for different species their whole lives demonstrating that that species might have developed and part to shape two separate genealogies. Regular choice is additionally another bit of proof for the Theory of Evolution. As matter of actuality, the Theory of Evolution is known not worked off of characteristic choice. Normal determination is a procedure in which qualities get the

Although we have collected tons of fossils, but the transition fossils are very rare, transitional fossils play an important role of biological evolution, if we can find such evidence in most of the fossils, we can claim that evolution is real, but so far we still can’t because The task to find those thousands upon thousands of missing links that connect the many fossil species with one another is too hard.