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
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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
1. Many experiments were conducted during the 1950s and 1960s with chick embryos and they showed that two patches of tissue essentially controlled the development of the pattern of bones inside limbs. Describe at
Your Inner Fish is a book that explains evolutionary concepts from multiple different scientific viewpoints. It explains how fossils help us to understand where we started from, and how we evolved. It also explains how DNA can help us track where we came from and trace our ancestry.
DNA is the genetic material that makes up the characteristics of all living organisms. While all human DNA is very similar in nature, there is just enough differences in
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Our similarities are so eye catching that it is hard to get back into thinking about hominids. Shubin describes in the texts some reason why we have evolved the way that we have. All evolutions of the creatures have changed into what they need to be for their surroundings.
Shortly after an egg is fertilized stem cells begin to form. These cells are programmed to form every organ and tissue in the body as the baby develops.
Bones with little nutritional value, such as toe or feet bones, were likely not a result of predation or scavenging, since both of these behaviors should favor body areas with greater muscle or tissue. In addition, it has been found that there is seldom evidence of digestion of foot bones. As a result, tooth marks on these bones would not be evidence for feeding behaviors. Isolated bones with teeth marks have also been found, typically on bones with little nutritional value. These are found in sites that have no evidence of feeding. Feeding sites typically have splintered bones, spiral fractures and deep tooth marks in the surrounding bones. However, these attributes are not found with isolated bones, which suggests that there was no scavenging or predation at these sites. A suggestion for this phenomenon is that tyrannosaurs were playing with their food. There is no absolute definition of play that can be proven scientifically but this provides an alternate hypothesis to account for the markings on these bones. One example that may indicate this behavior is the tyrannosaur teeth markings found on the occipital condyle of a Triceratops. This bone has no nutritional value at all and is very hard. Since there were no shed teeth found at the site, it is not likely that the tyrannosaur was playing with food. This leads to the
DNA is important to organisms because DNA carries hereditary information on to the next generation of cells during the process of replication. This is important for the health of an organism because when a cell divides because it becomes too large; it needs a copy of the genetic information in order to fulfill necessary processes in order to keep the organism alive.
DNA, Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is the basic structure for all life, it is the blueprint, the instruction manual, on how to build a living organism. DNA is made up of four nitrogen bases, adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine which are connected by sugar-phosphate bonds. Through a process called Protein Synthesis, the nitrogen bases are the code for the creation of amino acids. Essentially, DNA makes amino acids, amino acids make proteins, proteins make organisms. This process has been taking place for much longer than scientists have been able to document. Those scientists are called geneticists and their field is genetics.
Normally, I dread reading what seem to be boring books, but this book was judged far too quickly. While reading, Shubin managed to hold my attention and did so in a way that kept me wanting for more. Throughout the book, I felt as though I was being told a story, instead of reading about scientific findings. Instead of learning only about common descent, I was reading a story about a man’s life, his struggles, triumphs, as well as the human body’s journey through time. Using diagrams, pictures, and analogies, Shubin was able to clearly explain how modern humans are distantly related to fish, as well as many other life forms. This book changed my view on how I see other animals, in the sense that I feel slightly closer to other animals and I have a newfound respect for the human
First, the point that the fine lines were formed after the animal's death and were skin fibers. The lecturer casts doubt on this point, by saying that there was evidence in other animals that shown that the skin was well preserved, even if the animal was buried in volcanic ash. She states that even the decomposition of skin cannot be able to see in fossils. Thus, this claim challenges the point of the reading that the lines are skin decomposed into fibers.
DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, which is found in almost all living things. DNA serves as a code for the creation and maintenance of new cells within an organism. Within humans, it is found in almost every cell. Although most of our DNA is found within the nucleus of our cells as nuclear DNA, a very small amount of our DNA is also found within the mitochondria as mitochondrial DNA. Because mitochondrial DNA is generally not used for solving crimes, for the purpose of this paper it will be disregarded.
DNA is short for Deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is the building block for all carbon based life forms that we know of. DNA caries a set of instructions for all living beings, how tall, how short, color, size, and so on. Thus it is indispensible
All living organisms, from amoebas to humans, have a molecular code called DNA in their cells, which instruct the activities that keep the organism alive. DNA is made up of long, twisted strands of four molecular “letters” (A, T, G, and C), which pair up according to their complementary base pairs, and their order determines how proteins — the vital molecules that perform all the major tasks in our cells — are made. (Refer to Diagram 1 to help sum up the concept.)
First steps in the digestive system take place in the mouth, including our lips without them food and saliva would just fall out and it would be very disgusting. As the teeth cut, tear, and grind the food down into small, teeny-tiny pieces so that it can fit down the throat, which then will continue throughout the digestive system. Without our teeth we would simply choke on all of our food constantly and would not survive. There are several types of teeth in the ordinary human mouth,usually in a full set of permanent teeth there are in total thirty-two teeth. The different types of teeth do different things, Like the incisors that are adapted for cutting. Like when you are chewing let 's say some chicken these help to cut the chicken up into smaller bits.The eye-teeth or Canines are used mostly for piercing the food. The premolars and Molars have a broader shape and are used to grind and really break up the chicken that you are eating. Some people without teeth often get their food blended or eat soft foods that can go down quickly and easily.