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Name: Thao Clariett

Date: 10/22/14
Your Inner Reptile
1. Introduction:
Neil Shubin discovers our reptilian backgrounds. He explains the major
evolutions in the history of life expanded the way for our founders development into
mammals. He classifies some remarkable links: the amniotic sac was kept our reptile
founders eggs from drying out; our teeth can be tracked to aggressive creatures that lived
millions of years before dinosaurs; and our hair is related to the whiskers of reptile-like
mammals that lived in the dark.
2. How it relates to class:
- Shubin classifies: Fish Amphibian Reptile Early Mammal Human this concept
is similar to the vertebrate classes that was covered in Chapter 5 of our lecture.
- Therapsids: The transition from reptiles to mammals that was also covered in Chapter
5 of our lecture. He discovered this by tracing the results from the expansion of
embryos. He found out what become jawbones in reptiles become the middle ear
bones in a mammals.
3. Your Critique:
- The author clearly states the main point of our reptilian backgrounds. Its easy to
understand the material because he explained in details of concepts - one by one
such as reptiles egg, teeth, hair and ear bones.
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- Shubins research in the documentary extremely done well in a persuasive way. He
showed the proof of the evolution in the anatomy that seems to be the best way to
explain the concept to everyone who is not a hard-wired creationist.
- The documentarys greatest strengths is that Shubin introduced us the data that
supported the evolution in a subtle way but effective and easy to understand even if
youre not specialist.
4. Application of the material:
I found the documentary is really useful. Its a great educational tool. I understand
more about history of human evolution through science. For example, you can understand
the early human evolution by absorbing the transition from reptiles to mammals.
5. Your reaction:
The material presented in the documentary is really new to me; Ive never thought
that human has reptilian backgrounds. Learning about evolution and seeing the
transformations from reptile to mammal and mammal to us is remarkable. I was surprised
at how easy he did researching and actually finding the evidences exactly where it was
supposed to be. I wish we have more documentary like this to educate millions of
viewers.