Your Inner Fish: The Amazing Discovery Of Our 375 Million Year Old Ances

Description

"Your Inner Fish" tells the extraordinary history of the human body and gives answers to some of the questions that only evolution can. Why do we look the way we do? Why are we able to do all the different things we do? And, finally, why do we fall ill in the way that we do? Neil Shubin draws on the latest genetic research and his huge experience as an expeditionary paleontologist to show the incredible impact the 3.5 billion year history of life has had on our bodies. He takes readers on a fascinating, unexpected journey and allows us to discover the deep connection to nature in our own bodies.

Review: 'Profoundly fascinating !a magisterial work...if you want to understand the evolutionary history of man and other animals read this' Financial Times 'Stunning case histories!dazzling work ... Shubin's style is light and easygoing' Guardian 'Simple, passionate writing!a twenty-first-century anatomy lesson' Nature 'Fascinating!his conclusions take our history back to scarcely conceivable eras and forms' New Statesman 'A compelling evolutionary story... that unpacks the history of our bones' New Scientist 'An intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human' Oliver Sacks



Author Biography: Neil Shubin is a palaeontologist in the great tradition of his mentors, Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould. He has discovered fossils around the world that have changed the way we think about many of the key transitions in evolution and has pioneered a new synthesis of expeditionary palaeontology, developmental genetics and genomics. He trained at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley and is currently Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Chicago.

First published 2008; this edition with afterword 2009.

Reviews

'Profoundly fascinating !a magisterial work...if you want to understand the evolutionary history of man and other animals read this' Financial Times 'Stunning case histories!dazzling work ... Shubin's style is light and easygoing' Guardian 'Simple, passionate writing!a twenty-first-century anatomy lesson' Nature 'Fascinating!his conclusions take our history back to scarcely conceivable eras and forms' New Statesman 'A compelling evolutionary story... that unpacks the history of our bones' New Scientist 'An intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human' Oliver Sacks

Author description

Neil Shubin is a palaeontologist in the great tradition of his mentors, Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould. He has discovered fossils around the world that have changed the way we think about many of the key transitions in evolution and has pioneered a new synthesis of expeditionary palaeontology, developmental genetics and genomics. He trained at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley and is currently Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Chicago.