Unraveling the Secrets of 4 Billion Years of Evolution: A Guide to Assembling Life's Puzzle

randallf: Pacey, well written account of the evolution of the science of evolution in less than my (82 yr old) lifetime!

United Kingdom on Jan 03, 2024

Surya: As a high school student with little to no knowledge of paleontology , this is a great introduction to this field of study . Author explains things in lucid words and delves deeper making it an enjoyable read . Thank you.

India on Sep 20, 2023

E.: A well-written book about the evolution of living beings based on Paleonthology and Molecular Biology data that will surprise most readers. I made several notes about interesting facts narrated in this essay that I didn't know and would like to remember.

Spain on Mar 14, 2023

Aref Hakki: Like in his earlier book, Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin takes the reader by the hand and guides one through the intricacies of evolutionary development. Starting with St.George Jackson Mirvat's, on the surface, very reasonable critique of Darwin's theory he shows how this can be disposed of by the study of the development of the embryos of different species which, at the ouset, look very similar. Very clear and enjoyable read.

Germany on Aug 05, 2021

Amazon Customer: book quality is normal but content is very rich

Canada on Apr 22, 2021

Jack Hicks: Some Assembly Required, Decoding 4 Billion Years of Life from Ancient Fossils to DNA, 2020,
Neil Shubin
How did an ancient fish crawl onto land and begin terrestrial life? This has been a controversial question for biology since the time of Darwin. Darwin was prescient in saying major transitions are “often accompanied by a change of function”. Shubin answered the question in his 2005 book “Your Inner Fish”. Way before fish walked on land, they had developed a ballast system much like the ballast tanks on submarines. Connected to the esophagus of most fish are small air sacs. When a fish wants to be nearer the surface it pushes it’s mouth above water and inflates the air sacs. Maybe you have seen fish doing this? Over time fish in oxygen depleted bodies of water expanded these air sacs into alternate lungs. What happened to the gills once these fishlike animals began life on land? In the case of many mammals they formed the inner ear structure and in humans also the structure of the voice box.
Since decoding the genome in 2000 progress in the science of genetics and paleontology has been nothing short of astounding. The cost of decoding a...

United States on Jun 10, 2020

Sam Sloss: I'm reviewing and comparing two books on horizontal gene transfer (HGT). I've cross posted this also on the reviews for Quammen's book.

Shubin, Neil. 2020. Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA. New York: Pantheon Books.

Quammen, David. 2018. The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

I was familiar with both authors. Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within sit on my bookshelf. I’ve enjoyed Quammen’s The Boilerplate Rhino, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, and The Song of the Dodo of which I can find only the first, the later two lost to a thinning of my library.

There is some overlap between the two books in both style and focus. Through historical narrative, the science emerges from stories about the scientists who made these discoveries. Both focus on the relatively new fields of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). While Quammen’s discussion is far more extensive, both introduce us to Lynn Margulis and her revolutionary idea that all multi-celled life - plants, animals, and fungus - evolved from a primitive eukaryote cell created when...

United States on Jun 10, 2020