Neil Shubin, with his famous book, he believed that every single terrestrial amphibian, reptile, mammal and bird has exactly the same limb pattern as humans. It was either one major bone, two lower bones, a wrist, and five fingers that was descended from a common ancestor that had that particular structure. Work of other paleontologists have found rocks of about 165 million years old that have fully formed amphibians. There are no amphibian fossils in any rock so far discovered that are 185 million years old. There are fully formed bony fish in rocks of that age, Shubin and his crew went on a expedition on Ellesmere Island and was able to find evidence proving their hypothesis. Neil stated, It took us six years to find it, but this fossil…show more content… The answer came from 375-million year-old rocks, formed in ancient streams. The Tiktallik is nearly perfectly intermediate between fish and amphibians. It has a scales and fins with fin webbing, but the fins contain the standard limb structure of one upper arm bone, two lower arm bones, and a wrist. It also has a flattened head and neck of a land living creature. The story of our relationship to fossil animals is not just based on anatomy. It can also be seen in our genes. Those sequences of DNA that make us who we are. Indeed makes every living thing what it is. Shubin’s lab is divided into two parts. One to study fossils and one to study DNA and embryonic development. For these two things go hand in hand (if you’ll forgive the pun). This chapter is pretty thick and a summary will be difficult, so bear with me if this gets long. We all know that DNA is what makes us what we are. What we’re not always sure about it how. So, while Shubin was in the Arctic, another researcher in his lab was busy injected a form of Vitamin A into shark and skate embryos because Our limbs exist in three dimensions: They have a top and a bottom, a pinky side and a thumb side, a base and a tip. The bones at the tips, in our fingers, are different from the bones at
