When Neil Shubin ‘ended up directing the human anatomy course at the medical school at the University of Chicago’ he modestly remarked, ‘you couldn’t have imagined a worse candidate for the job . . . I’m a palaeontologist who has spent most of his career working on fish.’ In fact, he soon discovered, fossil fish have a lot to tell us about how the human body works. Alan Cane wrote in the Financial Times: ‘If you want to understand the evolutionary history of man and other animals, and read no other account this year, read this splendid monograph. And if you subscribe to “creationist” tendencies, read it also and repent your sorry ways.’

Penguin Books Ltd | Paperback 256 pp. |ISBN: 9780141027586