Your Inner Fish

So My birthday was yesterday, and my lovely wife knew just what to get me: a stack of books! I couldn't wait to start reading one of them called Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin a paleontologist and professor of human anatomy at the University of Chicago's medical school.

I got through the preface and the first chapter before I went to bed and have loved it so far. In essence the purpose of the book is to describe structurally how we have evolved from fish. Dr. Shubin was one of the people who discovered a fossil representing an intermediate form between fish and land animals with limbs and necks. This fossil is called Tiktaalik and was unearthed in the Canadian arctic. What impressed me about the first chapter was that Dr. Shubin was able to predict where he would find this fossil based on how old the dig site was (approx. 375 million years old). That is great evidence supporting evolution. Scientists are able to predict where to find transitional fossils and sure enough, they go out and find them.

I'm sure this book will fill my head with many more insights worthy of blogging about so stay tuned :-)

Some other books Mel got me are:

The Language of God by Francis Collins (I read this one over the summer and am excited to read it again)
Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller
Only a Theory by Kenneth Miller (his lecture really left an impression on Mel and I)
How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman (I read half of this over the summer and am excited to finish it)

Cheers.