This historical background brings home to the reader that science is performed by people in the context of their times.

Subsequent chapters focus on the history of discoveries of the embryonic origins and genetic control mechanisms at work in different regions of the body. This fish, with fins possessing basic wrist-like joints that could support the front of the body out of water, is believed to be a transitional animal whose existence partly bridges the gaps in our understanding of the emergence of tetrapods (four-legged animals) from their fish ancestors. In 2006, Shubin’s group reported their discovery of a fossilized Tiktaalik skeleton in northern Canada. Shubin and colleagues have contributed much to our understanding of the origin of vertebrate limbs with digits.

Shubin describes the magic of anatomical dissection and the fundamental homologies among limbs of different vertebrates. I empathize with those descriptions, which illustrate the serendipitous nature of finding fossils and also the predictability that is possible when researchers have done their homework. Written largely in the first person, this lively and convincing account begins with an exposition of the logic underlying the fields of anatomy and stratigraphy (geological study of the stratification of sediment and rock) mixed with Shubin’s experiences of the terrors and triumphs of paleontological field work. I once heard of a medical doctor who “didn’t believe in evolution” because he “could not see the connection between a human and a giraffe.” In Your inner fish, University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin combines information from the worlds of paleontology, embryology, and developmental genetics to explain the evolutionary connection not only between humans and giraffes (that is to say, all other mammals) but also between ourselves and all vertebrates and indeed nonvertebrates too.

The inner fish