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Essay about Your Inner Fish

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Kalia Espinoza
Macdonald
AP Biology
30 August 2010 Your Inner Fish Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin, is a journey into the 3.5- billion- year history of the human body. It is filled with many interesting topics covering the subject. The four topics I liked from it were: Getting a Grip, Handy Genes, Teeth Everywhere, and Adventures in Body Building. I feel these topics gave key information about our past. Chapter 2, Getting a Grip, talks about the connections between the human and other creatures’ limbs. It also talks about Shubin’s fossil, Tiktaalik, and the unique specialized limbs it had. Ours hands have long fascinated scientists because of the complexity in them. Sir Richard …show more content…

The DNA contains the information needed to make up our body and even our hands. During the third to eighth week of conception, fingers, arm bones, and toes are being formed. Limbs start off as buds that then extend outward. This is all due to the DNA that is in each and every cell in the body. To understand how this pattern happens, scientists take a look at embryos. Sometimes they interfere with the development to see what occurs when things go wrong. Scientists use chicken eggs to study this. Just by adding a dab of vitamin A on a chicken embryo, you will get a mirror image of the embryo. The patch of tissue is called ZPA. Every living thing is composed up of cells that contain DNA. The cells are specialized to its own function. It can carry the information needed to make up the body and hands. Chapter 4, Teeth Everywhere, discusses teeth, obviously. By looking at an animal’s teeth you can learn much from it. They are a powerful window into an animal’s lifestyle. Teeth are a useful way to learn about our past. The hardest parts of the body are the teeth. They give you a clue on an animal’s diet. Also, they are a good window on how different ways of feeding came about. In older rocks, at the same base, scientists find reptiles that look dog- like. The creatures that walked on the four legs had big skulls and sharp teeth. These reptiles had jaws of many bones. The higher in the rocks are, the

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