num_pages: 267
description: In Some Assembly Required Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity. An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller Your Inner Fish this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.Over billions of years ancient fish evolved to walk on land reptiles transformed into birds that fly and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs talk and write. For more than a century paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.We have now arrived at a remarkable moment prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns trial and error accident and invention.
language: English
title: Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
publisher: Pantheon