Have You ‘Devolved’ Yourself Yet?

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his book On the Origin of Species. As part of Darwin200 (a group of organizations who have joined together to celebrate Darwin’s bicentenary), the UK’s Open University website offers a fun tool allowing you to journey back in time to see what you would have looked like as an early human.

Simply upload a photo of yourself into the tool and see what happens!

http://www.open.ac.uk/darwin/devolve-me.php

Our species, Homo sapien, has been the only species of hominin on the planet for around the last 12,000 years—a very short space of time compared to our ancestors:

Homo heidelbergensis (lived 400,000 to 500,000 years ago)

Homo erectus (1.5 million years ago)

Homo habilis (2.2 – 1.6 million years ago)

Australopithecus afarensis (3.9 and 2.9 million years ago)

Note: To view the site properly you’ll need Flash Player 9 or above and Javascript enabled in your browser.

Posted on March 18, 2009