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.

        

Your Inner Fish Chapter 3 Summary

     In chapter 3 Shubin mostly talks about historical discoveries of ZPA tissue. Fossils are not only anatomically related to us, there is more to this. Important biology concept that is discussed in this chapter is genes. Genes are major part of your body; they make you who you are. In this chapter Shubin also discusses about this laboratory which is divided into 2 parts: 1st part is to study fossils and the other one is to embryonic development and DNA sequences.  As we know that most cells are alike in our body, Shubin says that we have same exact copy of DNA in most of our cells. Which I think is true because when cell divides it make 2 cells that are similar.

            Shubin discusses about the limbs that are in our body: "Our limbs exist in three dimensions: They have a top and a bottom, a pinky side and a thumb side, a base and a tip.  The bones at the tips, in our fingers, are different from the bones at the shoulder.  Likewise, our hands are different from our thumbs." This is a quote from the book. 

            There are many different chemical that happen in our body at the same time. So I think from what the chapter was trying to say: your embryo and basic things are already ready to go before a women finds out that she is pregnant. Which I think is really cool because there are many things that are happening inside our body with us acknowledging it. By this I feel that we are not the boss of the body but our brain is! 

Your Inner Fish Chapter 2 Summary

        Author starts this chapter with gross stuff! In this chapter he also talks about how he taught medical school level courses. Even though I think it is really weird a paleontologist teaching medical school level courses. Shubin also talks about how a hand is "quintessentially human" meaning hands describe human's "quality" and "capacity". Shubin also talks about how for Sir Charles Bell, the hand was the perfect design. Also, how he thought that it was evidence for God because it was perfectly built for us as tool users.

   One bone, two bones, bunch of little bones. Shubin told us in the book that Sir Richard Owen is an anatomist who noticed that there is similar pattern to how all our bones are located. Owen described a Gorilla first. 

    The Most Interesting part is that Tiktaalik has the arm setup and musculature to do push-ups. I felt that was really weird because a fish with arm set that best suits to do push-ups. But according to environment it might help Tiktaalik! 

Your Inner fish Chapter 1 Summary:

In this chapter, author spends most of time discussing about discovery, a fish know as Tiktaalik. Author also reminds us that 99 percent of all species that ever existed are extinct.  And that the percentage of organisms that have been fossilized is miniscule and that only certain species will ever be fossilized because of where they lived. He also provides us an analogy by comparing animals to in fossil's layer. Shubin uses an example of a zoo to describe the nested hierarchy of living things. Shubin in this chapter also talks about correct conditions and what you need to look for when you go in fossil expedition.

            Also, in this chapter Shubin asks a question "How can we visualize events that happened millions and, in many cases, billions of years ago?" Well, that could be only through fossils. In the chapter they mention about how Shubin and his team went on expedition to find out the fish (Tiktaalik), which would fit the category of "Everything with limbs" or "everything with heads." In this chapter Shubin future explains how his team went to Pennsylvania. It basically sets up all the introduction to rest of chapters.