The Series
Have you every wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why our hands have five fingers instead of six? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Scientist Neil Shubin has spent much of his life digging into our ancient past, to try to understand how our distant animal ancestors have shaped the human form. Using fossil evidence and our DNA history Neil traces back different parts of our body’s anatomy to animals that lived millions of years ago. Along the way he reveals that we can thank our fishy past for many of our body’s quirks – from hernias to hiccups.
With his natural wit and story-telling, Neil uses science to explore the origins of the human body. He travels from the high Arctic, to the deserts of Ethiopia to the high plains of South African search of the most important fossils.
Meet the family you never knew you had.