I have started reading the book “Your Inner Fish” a while ago. Its a really amazing book, written by famous paleontologist Neil Shubin, and it actually helps you find your inner fish. His way of writing is so clear and easy to understand even for a beginner like me that I understand most of what he wrote and too can really enjoy it and be amazed and fascinated.
As I said he is a paleontologist and his specialty is fish but thats not where he and his coworkers stop. In this book he tells stories of his experiences in different areas they went on expeditions for finding fossils. They sometimes had some prominent discoveries. I think he wanted us, the readers, to enjoy the amazing discoveries he had in his life, and to find out how life worked its way up from millions of years ago till today that we have millions of various species all around earth. One of the things I found very special in his writing is that he wrote so simple but you can feel how he felt, the joy, envy and even the breeze on cliffs by oceans side where they turned so many stones to find what they were looking for.
The most amazing thing at last is how it gives us insight about who we are and how we are made over millions of years exactly with evidence.
With geographic skills and aerial photos and other different ways they find the rocks made of right material(for example they shouldnt be volcanic for they had high temprature and would burn and turn to ashes what ever fell in them when they were made) and with right age and the most important one, easy to reach. Then they look for fossils there, with a bit of luck after all these steps they would find what theyre looking for.
One of the things he and many other scientist were and are interested in is limb. As they, the scientists in different branches especially paleontology found out is that all the animals have the same design for their hands, the bones, the number of them, all the same, the only difference is the length and thikness. There are many many great examples and stories he has told in his book about this that I really encourage you to go and read for yourself.
What Neil did was searching for the start of everyone of these facinating things the scientists found about animals. Where is the origin of todays animals limbs? Where is the origin of our teeth? How about other organs? The scientists didnt stop at looking at different animals and million years old fossils. Geneticists looked for traces of this discovery in animal embryos. And they made some interesting discoveries. You can search for hedgehog gene to see what theyve found about it. Its really amazing that all of the creatures have the plan of their bodies in their DNA and thats how every one of us was one day one cell and now consist of bellions of them.
I write more about it later in an other entry . . .
Arash-Interests 