# Quote — Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish

> Do the facts of our ancient history mean that humans are not special or unique among living creatures? Of course not. In fact, knowing something about the deep origins of humanity only adds to the remarkable fact of our existence: all of our extraordinary capabilities arose from basic components that evolved in ancient fish and other creatures. From common parts came a very unique construction. We are not separate from the rest of the living world; we are part of it down to our bones and, as we will see shortly, even our genes.

- Author: [Neil Shubin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin.md)
- Book: [Your Inner Fish](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish.md)
- Page: 43
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin#Your_Inner_Fish:_A_Journey_Into_the_3.5-Billion-Year_History_of_the_Human_Body_(2008)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/do-the-facts

## More from this book

> Everything changes when we look at the evidence; what looks impossible actually happened.

p. 6 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/everything-changes-when.md)

> Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as algae, bacteria, and amoebae. The first animal with a head did not appear until October. The first human appears on December 31. We, like all the animals and plants that have ever lived, are recent crashers at the party of life on earth.

p. 119 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/take-the-entire.md)

> The order of fossils in the world’s rocks is powerful evidence of our connections to the rest of life.

p. 8 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-shubin/your-inner-fish/the-order-of-fossils.md)