Intro to Evolution

Fun fact: My favorite scientist is Charles Darwin. I've read many books about him...not just his scientific theories, but also about his life. -- So naturally when I found out the next unit was about evolution, I became majorly excited (that's an understatement).

For homework, we read chapters 1, 2, and 11 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. These chapters talked about fossils and how they are formed, homology, and provided basic information and theories about evolution. It was interesting to read a book by Neil Shubin, because he found the fossil for the Tiktaalik (the transition fossil between water and land organisms) and I studied about the Tiktaalik last year in Honors Paleo.  Here's a picture of the Tiktaalik model in our very own Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology:

As you can see, it has a flat head and wrist-like structures of an amphibian, but fins and scales like that of a fish.