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

Neil Shubin

Vintage Books, 2009 - Science - 237 pages

Details on a Major New Discovery included in a New Afterword

Why do we look the way we do? Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - steve02476 - LibraryThing

Science writing at its best. Wonderful book about how our human bodies came about through evolution from fish and earlier. The title always sounded a bit odd to me, and if it does to you, please don’t ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - MontzaleeW - LibraryThing

Your Inner Fish A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body By: Neil Shubin This was a terrific look at how nature was a recycler of ideas! Through the years if something didn't work ...

About the author

Neil Shubin is provost of The Field Museum as well as a 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
• Author: Neil Shubin
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 2009
• ISBN: 0307277453, 9780307277459
• Length: 237 pages
• Subjects: Science / Life Sciences / Anatomy & Physiology; Science / Life Sciences / Evolution; Science / Life Sciences / Human Anatomy & Physiology