Your Inner Fish Chapter 5 Review

Essential Question: What is the structure of you head and connections to other animals?

      To summarize this chapter in one sentence it would be this chapter is all about structure of head and ancestry. I think he mentions about him studying about a skull before his anatomy exam. He then talks about the fundamental parts of our skull which are: Plates, rods and blocks. The plates cover our brain. The blocks holds up our brain. The rods make up our jaws, ears, and throats.

      When I was researching more about  four arches. I found out that humans and sharks have kind of the same embryonic development. Website mentions that "Human development is that we start from the same beginning as sharks.  The pieces of the embryo that form the head of humans and the head and gills of fish are in the same place, they are same shape, and there are four of them." I felt that was really interesting.

       

Your Inner Fish Chapter 4 Summary

      In this chapter Shubin talks about teeth. He says that teeth of a fossil are really important to a paleontologist. Shubin describes some of his early days as a fossil hunter. I felt interesting how Shubin said that you look for something that is not a rock! I always had this question about how paleontologists find fossils? How do they know where to dig up? I just felt that was interesting.

    Shubin describes a group of primitive mammal-like animals called trithelodonts. Trithelodonts mean “three-knob teeth”. This was some of the earliest specialization in the shape of teeth. From my own research on why teeth are important and from what the book told me: Teeth are the original source of all hard parts of vertebrate animals.  Everything from specialized teeth, bones, and armor on some species all came from teeth. Teeth are the common ancestor of everything that comes from the skin.  We couldn't have hair or even mammary glands without the development of teeth 500 million years ago.