Neil Shubin is the Robert R. Bensley Professor, Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Associate Dean for Academic Strategy at the University of Chicago. He was part of the group that discovered the 375 million year old Tiktaalik roseae fossil, considered an important transitional form between fish and land animals. He's also the author of two popular science books — The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013) and the best-selling Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2008). Your Inner Fish was named best book of the year by the National Academy of Sciences. The Shubin Lab seeks to understand the mechanisms behind the evolutionary origin of new anatomical features and faunas. The philosophy that underlies all of their 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.
