A celebrated scientist who has traveled the world searching for clues to the evolutionary origins of animals has been selected for the fourth annual Richard H. and Glenda G. Rosenblatt Lectureship in Evolutionary Biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
Neil Shubin, a University of Chicago researcher, will present “Finding Your Inner Fish” at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5, in Sumner Auditorium on the Scripps Oceanography campus, 8602 La Jolla Shores Drive in La Jolla (Sumner Auditorium is one-half block north of El Paseo Grande). The lecture is free and open to the public.
Shubin discovered Tiktaalik roseae, a 375-million-year-old fossil fish unearthed in the Canadian Arctic in 2004 that has been dubbed “the missing link” between fish and land animals. Also called a “fishapod,” Tiktaalik roseae has features of both a fish and the first four-legged animals and sheds light on the pivotal point when the first fish ventured out on land.
Shubin is the Robert R. Bensley Professor and associate dean in the University of Chicago’s Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy as well as provost of The Field Museum.
Last year Shubin published the popular book: “Your Inner Fish: A Journey Through the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.”
The Rosenblatt Lectureship is part of an endowed series of yearly lectures by distinguished evolutionary biologists. It was created by Scripps ichthyologist Richard Rosenblatt and his wife, Glenda. Richard Rosenblatt, who has been associated with Scripps since 1958, is a Scripps professor and curator emeritus of the Marine Vertebrate Collection, part of the Scripps Oceanographic Collections, the largest and most complete university-based oceanographic collection in the world.
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Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at UC San Diego, is one of the oldest, largest and most important centers for global science research and education in the world. The National Research Council has ranked Scripps first in faculty quality among oceanography programs nationwide. Now in its second century of discovery, the scientific scope of the institution has grown to include biological, physical, chemical, geological, geophysical and atmospheric studies of the earth as a system. Hundreds of research programs covering a wide range of scientific areas are under way today in 65 countries. The institution has a staff of about 1,300, and annual expenditures of approximately $155 million from federal, state and private sources. Scripps operates one of the largest U.S. academic fleets with four oceanographic research ships and one research platform for worldwide exploration.