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Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.
Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik—the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006—tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.
Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.
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Amazon.com Review
Oliver Sacks on Your Inner Fish
Since the 1970 publication of Migraine, neurologist Oliver Sacks's unusual and fascinating case histories of "differently brained" people and phenomena--a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a community of people born totally colorblind, musical hallucinations, to name a few--have been marked by extraordinary compassion and humanity, focusing on the patient as much as the condition. His books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film), and 2007's Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.
 Your Inner Fish is my favorite sort of book--an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human. The field of evolutionary biology is just beginning an exciting new age of discovery, and Neil Shubin's research expeditions around the world have redefined the way we now look at the origins of mammals, frogs, crocodiles, tetrapods, and sarcopterygian fish--and thus the way we look at the descent of humankind. One of Shubin's groundbreaking discoveries, only a year and a half ago, was the unearthing of a fish with elbows and a neck, a long-sought evolutionary "missing link" between creatures of the sea and land-dwellers. My own mother was a surgeon and a comparative anatomist, and she drummed it into me, and into all of her students, that our own anatomy is unintelligible without a knowledge of its evolutionary origins and precursors. The human body becomes infinitely fascinating with such knowledge, which Shubin provides here with grace and clarity. Your Inner Fish shows us how, like the fish with elbows, we carry the whole history of evolution within our own bodies, and how the human genome links us with the rest of life on earth. Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher whose humor and intelligence and spellbinding narrative make this book an absolute delight. Your Inner Fish is not only a great read; it marks the debut of a science writer of the first rank. (Photo © Elena Seibert) A Note from Author Neil Shubin This book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in my life. On account of faculty departures, I ended up directing the human anatomy course at the University of Chicago medical school. Anatomy is the course during which nervous first-year medical students dissect human cadavers while learning the names and organization of most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in the body. This is their grand entrance to the world of medicine, a formative experience on their path to becoming physicians. At first glance, you couldn't have imagined a worse candidate for the job of training the next generation of doctors: I'm a fish paleontologist. It turns out that being a paleontologist is a huge advantage in teaching human anatomy. Why? The best roadmaps to human bodies lie in the bodies of other animals. The simplest way to teach students the nerves in the human head is to show them the state of affairs in sharks. The easiest roadmap to their limbs lies in fish. Reptiles are a real help with the structure of the brain. The reason is that the bodies of these creatures are simpler versions of ours. During the summer of my second year leading the course, working in the Arctic, my colleagues and I discovered fossil fish that gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fish over 375 million years ago. That discovery and my foray into teaching human anatomy led me to a profound connection. That connection became this book. Click on thumbnails for larger images  |  |  | | The crew removing the first Tiktaalik in 2004 | Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin propecting for new sites (Credit: Andrew Gillis) | The valley where Tiktaalik was discovered (credit: Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences) |  |  | | The models of Tiktaalik being constructed for exhibition (Tyler Keillor, University of Chicago) | Me with one of the models (John Weinstein, Field Museum) |
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 Our Evolutionary Branch, Demystified
Neil Shubin, an evolutionary biologist who works as Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, clearly chose the right career. In Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body, Shubin traces the history of our anatomy with a passion that leaps off the page. His conversational writing style, coupled with animated anecdotes and crisp descriptions, energized my reading so that two hundred pages seemed more like twenty.
The title of the book, Your Inner Fish, refers to the evolutionary history we humans share with other animals. Shubin, who also acts as Professor of Anatomy and Associate Dean at the University of Chicago, opens with the tale of how he co-discovered Tiktaalik roseae, sometimes called the "fish that crawled out of the water," in the Canadian Arctic in 2006. This groundbreaking find provides compelling evidence of an intermediate stage between fish and early limbed animals, and serves as an illustration of the "history of life within us," one example among many that Shubin highlights.
Of course, Charles Darwin predicted that transitional forms would illustrate a gradual evolutionary shift between two distinct groups, and Tiktaalik fits the bill. Like most fish, Tiktaalik possessed gills, scales, and webbed fins. Yet, it also sported innovations like wrists, lungs, and a mobile neck, and it denotes the earliest creature to possess all the bones of our arm, wrist, and palm. Previous to Tiktaalik, fish did not exhibit these joints. Thus, this creature laid the stepping-stones for later vertebrates to transition onto dry land.
The author tells us why we should care about this: "Virtually every illness we suffer has some historical component. ... [D]ifferent branches of the tree of life inside us - from ancient humans, to amphibians and fish, and finally to microbes - come back to pester us today ... show[ing] that we were not designed rationally, but are products of a convoluted history."
He pinpoints the evolutionary history of our senses of smell, sight, and hearing, as well as that of our wrists, teeth, jaws, and skull, and he explains such common ailments as hiccups, hernias, and sleep apnea.
In a poignant passage about dissecting the human hand, Shubin recalls his personal introduction as a student to human anatomy. After spending months dissecting internal organs, he felt detached about the task before him. Seeing the hand jolted him back to reality: "[s]uddenly this mechanical exercise, dissection, became deeply and emotionally personal." Similarly, when he examined Tiktaalik's modified fin for the first time, he felt that he had "uncovered a deep connection between my humanity and [that of] another being," which is the whole premise of his book.
Your Inner Fish provides a fascinating overview of the history of our own evolution, an introduction that is both readable and inviting. I suppose the simple explanations and introductory tone Shubin uses might give more well-read students seeking in-depth analysis or discussion, reason to criticize, but for a non-scientist reader such as myself, Shubin strikes the right note for piquing my interest further. And simply by asking what evolution from our animal ancestors really means for us, Shubin makes the book personally relevant in a modern context.
Roxanne Enman
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 Interesting read, aimed at a general audience ( extremelytired )
This is a good, informative book, aimed at an introductory audience. Shubin is a true renaissance-man, and he brings all facets of his expertise to bear on showing how all of us have ancestors in common with fish. The book is a fun read very accessible, and a highly recommended part of a laymen's library.
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Ayurveda, Science, and History ( constantine@snet.net )
Reading this book reminded me of the new book by Frank John Ninivaggi, MD at Yale. Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West says similar things. It broadens one's views on health, evolution, our biological selves, and ecological intimacy with nature. Two highly intelligent scientists give us a look into reality, with reference to its possible meaning for humankind. Wow! how great is the human mind!!
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 Could have used an Inner Editor ( oclarki )
I should confess up front that my not loving this book is partly my own fault. Given Shubin's academic pedigree -- and it is impressive -- I expected the work to be more substantive. That he decided to write for a more general audience is not so much a problem as a simple disappointment.
But that's only part of my issue with the book. Simply put, it's poorly written. While literary style is not the forte of the majority of scientists, you'd expect them to have at least relied on a competent editor. Most offensive of all was his labored redundancy; important sentences were deemed so important that they were sometimes used -- essentially verbatim -- multiple times; if a point could be made in a short paragraph, Shubin used three.
Still, he has some interesting stories to tell, and while their connections to broader concepts are sometimes forced in rather painful transitions, the episode and ideas should hold the attention of most general readers.
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What a great book ( seacreations )
I personally feel that this should be required reading for every biology or anatomy and physiology class in the country. I read the book over the summer and have been looking for ways to work it into my science class. It is a lucid explanation of why the human body is such a wonder and at times such a Rube Goldberg device. It all makes perfect sense in an evolutionary light. The author's opening chapters are enlightening in his explanation of the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution and how it has been tested repeatedly and supported by the evidence. I am very happy to see so many other teachers finding and utilizing this book with their classes.
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