Some Assembly Required

Please note: In-person program attendees must show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours and wear a mask while inside Benjamin Franklin Hall. With limited space for social distancing, requiring proof of vaccination is the best way to protect the health and safety of our visitors and staff. 

This event will be streamed live. Watch here at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 30. 

Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.

We have now arrived at a remarkable moment—prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.

In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life’s immense diversity.

NEIL SHUBIN is the author of Some Assembly Required, Your Inner Fish, and The Universe Within. He is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.