UA ALLELE Lecture Series Presents ‘Finding Your Inner Fish’

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Neil Shubin, professor of anatomy and associate dean at the University of Chicago, will present his lecture, “Finding Your Inner Fish,” Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Biology Auditorium on The University of Alabama campus.

Shubin’s lecture, which will discuss new discoveries regarding the shift of fish to land-living animals, is the second in a series of six speakers from The Alabama Lectures on Life’s Evolution, known as ALLELE, for the 2007-2008 academic year. The third year of the series is made possible in large part by private gifts from Lou Perry of La Jolla, Calif., Eric Hopkins of Austin, Texas and The Barbara and Frank Peters Foundation of Corona del Mar, Calif.

Shubin’s research sits at the edge of expeditionary paleontology, developmental genetics and genomics; the goal of which is to gain insight into the evolutionary origin of anatomical features of animals.

In 2004, Shubin and his colleagues, Ted Daeschler and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., led the team that discovered Tiktaalik roseae. Better known as the “the fish with hands,” Tiktaalik is a 375 million-year-old fossil fish that sheds light on the pivotal point in the history of life on Earth when the first fish ventured out onto land.

This groundbreaking discovery made front-page news in several media outlets including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and was published in the journal Nature. Shubin was named ABC News’ “Person of the Week” in April 2006 and continues to gain national recognition for revealing the missing link between ancient sea creatures and the first creatures to walk on land.

In January, Random House Publishing released “Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Years of the Human Body.” In “Your Inner Fish” Shubin recounts this discovery and explores evolutionary history, tracing the origins of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth.

“I seek to understand the mechanisms behind the evolutionary origin of new anatomical features and faunas,” said Shubin, who also is the provost of The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “The philosophy that underlies all of my empirical work is derived from the conviction that progress in the study of evolutionary biology results from linking research across diverse temporal, phylogenetic, and structural scales.”

In addition to private support, The ALLELE series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences; and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, history, philosophy and psychology.

The lectures are designed for a non-technical audience and are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.bama.ua.edu/~evolution/alleleindex.html.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All-American Teams.

Editor’s Note: Immediately following the lecture, Dr. Shubin will sign copies of his recently released book, “Finding Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Years of the Human Body,” presently #20 on the NY Times Best Seller list.