New Book Reveals an Evolutionary Journey of the Human Body

Jan 08, 02:31 PM

Contact: Catherine Gianaro of the University of Chicago, +1-773- 702-6241, catherine.gianaro@uchospitals.edu; or Greg Borzo of the Field Museum, +1-312-665-7106, gborzo@fieldmuseum.org

CHICAGO, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Paleontologist Neil Shubin unites the discoveries of fossils and the sciences of paleontology and genetics with his experience of teaching human anatomy into a written voyage of evolution, titled Your Inner Fish: A Journey Through the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

The best road maps to human bodies lie in the bodies of other animals, Shubin writes in his new book, which will be available Jan. 15. The reason is that the bodies of these creatures are often simpler versions of ours.

In Your Inner Fish, Shubin, Ph.D., professor and associate dean for organismal and evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, and provost of the Field Museum, uses new fossil finds, genetic discoveries and animal anatomy to trace the origins of humans and the evolution of different body parts, such as limbs, teeth, head, ears and eyes. He explains how everything that is apparently unique about humans is built from parts that are shared with other creatures.

I was hooked from the first chapter, writes paleoanthropologist Don Johanson, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, and co-discoverer of Lucy. Creationists will want this book banned because it presents irrefutable evidence for a transitional creature that set the stage for the journey from sea to land. This engaging book combines the excitement of discovery with the rigors of great scholarship to provide a convincing case of evolution from fish to man.

In 2006, the public was overwhelmed with news of the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, a fossil fishapod that represents the transition between fish and four-legged animals, known as tetrapods. This finding gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fish over 375 million years ago, said Shubin, one of the fossil discoverers.

Ancient fish bones, Shubin writes, can be a path to knowledge about who we are and how we got that way. We learn about our own bodies in seemingly bizarre places, ranging from the fossils of worms and fish recovered from rocks from around the world to the DNA in virtually every animal alive on earth today.

While a graduate student at Harvard University, Shubin realized that fish, frog and chicken embryos looked alike and that there is a common architecture within all of them. For example, a fish and a human look identical for weeks after fertilization.

Humans can map their evolutionary history through DNA, he explains. How the human body is built is written in its genetic code, and scientists can compare that code with those of creatures as different as flies and fish. For example, appendages like wings, fins or limbs are built by similar types of genes. The transformation of fins into limbs didnt involve the origin of new genes, but rather, ancient ones -- such as those involved in fin development -- were used in novel ways to make limbs with fingers and toes.

Additionally, scientists turned to creatures such as flies, worms, yeasts, mice, and even microbes to better understand diseases. Shubin suggests that many leading causes of death in humans -- heart disease, diabetes, obesity and stroke -- have a genetic basis and probably an evolutionary one as well. During evolutionary history as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, human ancestors were active predators or active collectors and tree- living animals. With illnesses that humans suffer today, much of the difficulty is almost certainly due to our having a body built for an active animal but the lifestyle of a spud, he writes.

The hardcover 240-page book will be available online and at major bookstores beginning Jan. 15, 2008. Shubin will give a book lecture at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26, in Montgomery Ward Hall at the Field Museum. The lecture is free with basic admission to the Field. The book will be available for sale outside the lecture hall before and after the presentation. Shubin is scheduled to sign books afterward.

Publisher Pantheon Books of New York has announced an initial print run of 50,000 copies. An audio version of the book is planned, and the book already is being translated into Japanese, German, French, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian and Dutch. Book illustrations are by Kalliopi Monoyios, a scientific illustrator in Shubins lab at Chicago.

SOURCE Field Museum

(c) 2008 U.S. Newswire. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. New Book Reveals an Evolutionary Journey of the Human Body
Back to Current Headlines