Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body » (Reprint)

Neil Shubin is provost of The Field Museum as well as professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as an associate dean. Educated at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, he lives in Chicago.www.neilshubin.com

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....

Preface ix

1 Finding Your Inner Fish 3

2 Getting a Grip 28

3 Handy Genes 44

4 Teeth Everywhere 60

5 Getting Ahead 81

6 The Best-Laid (Body) Plans 97

7 Adventures in Bodybuilding 116

8 Making Scents 139

9 Vision 148

10 Ears 158

11 The Meaning of It All 173

Epilogue 199

Afterword to the Vintage Books Edition 203

Notes, References, and Further Reading 211

Acknowledgments 223

Index 227