Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish"

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a nice romp through developmental biology with lots of annecdotes about Shubin's research. His specialty is the early evolution of tetrapods from fish. This accounts for the title. And he justifies this by telling us that he teaches an anatomy course and uses knowledge about the evolution of anatomical details to help the ideas sink in.

This book is for the general reader interested in evolution, our origins, and who would rather read science mystery rather than murder mystery.

I particularly enjoyed his honesty about his early forays into fossil hunting. He admits he was a failure. He points out that you don't "see" the fossils until something like a light goes on, you develop a "template" which makes the fossils stand out. One minute you can't see anything, the next they are as obvious as the nose in front of your face. That's how it works. It's an honest account of learning on the job.

On quibble I have with the book. On page 127 Shubin states:

Collagen seems particularly important: the most common protein in animals, it makes up over 90 percent of the body's protein by weight.

This disagrees with the Wikipedia entry on "collagen" which states:

Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue in animals and the most abundant protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content.

I have no specific knowledge in this area, but the Wikipedia claim strikes me as more "reasonable" than Shubin's claim. I suspect it is an error in Shubin's book that was missed.