Your Inner Fish

Paleontologist Neil Shubin used fossil fish to teach human anatomy.

“Being a fish paleontologist is a powerful way to teach and learn human anatomy” Shubin said, “Some of the best road maps to our own bodies lie in other creatures.”

Shubin’s evolution lecture, was based on his best selling 2008 book, “Your Inner Fish” and has been featured in radio, TV, and film. He hosted a three part series on PBS.

His book is based on his discovery of the Tiktaalik roseae, which is a flat headed fish with fins and arm bones.  This discovery took Shubin six years to find the snout of the nose. He knew he found the tiktaalik when he saw a V-shaped fossil.

“When you’re finding fossils, you mainly find teeth, jaws as long as your arm, armor fish, arm bones and leg bones” Shubin said, “you find rocks with texture.”

He said he was looking for Devonian rocks, which are rocks in the right age. They also look for rocks in the right type and exposed to the surface. Fossils are produced by one scale of another layered on top of each other.

Shubin was looking in Northern Canada with his colleagues when he found the tiktaalik. They wanted to have a name that was meaningful, and a name they could pronounce.

“As a paleontologist, you learn the ‘rock type’” Shubin said.

Paleontologist also look at road construction sites to find the best fossils. The places roads are now, is where a fish or a creature once lived.

Shubin earned a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University and studied at Columbia University. Then, he moved to the University of Chicago in 2000 to become to anatomy chairman, and to teach an anatomy course to first year medical students.