Studying fish anatomy is a good way to learn about human anatomy because it can help us understand how we evolved. This is because often part of the anatomy of our body is also found in other creatures, such as fish. These anatomical connections are found in fossils etched into stone. Using these fossils to learn about ancient fish reveals similarities between fish and human anatomy. For example, the basic nerves of fish are similar to those found in the human head. Fish are also the first creatures with bony skeletons, so they have backbones and skulls just like humans. Studying the similarities between human and fish anatomy can help us better recognize and understand how we evolved. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Fish were the first creatures with a backbone/spine. About 400 million years ago fish swam in water. Then about 40 million years later amphibians appeared. Amphibians were the first vertebrates to walk on land but they could only breed in water, so they stayed near water. After the amphibians came the reptiles. Some reptiles lived in water, but most lived on land. About 200 million years ago reptiles were followed by mammals, and much later mammals were followed by primates. In the hand there are complex connections between bones, muscles and tendons, but the tiny hand muscles that run along the tendon are what truly distinguish us as a primate/human. Sir Richard Owen, a 19th century anatomist, is credited with the important discovery that all animals had bones that followed the same pattern but were modified to perform different functions. This pattern was: 1 bone, 2 bones, ossicles, then fingers. This was found because it was the age of discovery at the time, so people were discovering many different types of creatures. These different creatures were brought to him where he studied them and found their common bone structure. Jenny Clack and Stephanie Pierce were trying to figure out the animal that was halfway between fins and limbs. It was called ichthyostega, a tetrapod. To understand this animal, they looked at how it lived and wanted to see how much movement was possible in each of its limb joints and how it compared to modern animals. Nowadays, the Arctic area where Neil Schubin and his colleagues search for fossils is a valley carved by glaciers. It has red and green rocks tilted and stacked on top of each other. Millions of years ago the rocks stretched across the valley and were straight and not sloping. The valley was also a giant floodplain filled with rivers, swamps, and streams. It was full of all kinds of different life forms. It is useful to study fish embryos to understand vertebrate evolution because fish, the first vertebrate, have embryos with the basic body structure that become our bodies, the last vertebrate. Even though fish were on earth long before humans, the fish and the human embryo look almost identical. Both have a head, body, tail, neck area, and gill arches. Since fish is an ancestor of humans, vertebrates in between should also have similar embryos, and by studying fish embryos it is possible to discover how they might have evolved into humans. Cliff Tabin's work studied how digits like fingers formed. He used chick embryos to examine the development process before limb formation. By probing what is important in the embryo to see what interrupts the process or trying to understand what they would do if moved, he was able to discover which gene altered the way.