Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin

  • Title: Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
  • Education: PhD, AM, both from Harvard University; AB, Columbia University
  • Joined UChicago faculty: 2000
  • nshubin@uchicago.edu
  • @NeilShubin

Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin has conducted landmark research on the evolutionary origin of anatomical features of animals. He has conducted fieldwork in much of North America, including Greenland, as well as China, Africa and Antarctica. One of his most significant discoveries, a 375-million-year-old fossil called Tiktaalik roseae, is an important transitional form between fish and land animals.

Shubin has written two popular science books: the best-selling Your Inner Fish (2008), which was made into an Emmy Award-winning PBS series; and The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013).

He serves as associate dean for academic strategy in the Biological Sciences Division and a senior adviser to President Robert J. Zimmer. Shubin is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Shubin Stories

New fossil shows four-legged fishapod that returned to the water while Tiktaalik ventured onto land

Researchers discover a new fossil that is closely related to other animals that made the transition to land, but with features more suited for swimming and life in the water.

The 2021 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture with Prof. Neil Shubin

<p>In his Ryerson Lecture, Prof. Neil Shubin discusses his groundbreaking discovery of <em>Tiktaalik roseae</em>.</p>

How fish fins evolved just before the transition to land

Research on fossilized fish from the late Devonian period, roughly 375 million years ago, details the evolution of fins as they began to transition into limbs fit for walking on land.

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Expertise

Evolutionary biology, Organismal biology and anatomy, Paleontology