Have you ever wondered what you would have looked like as an early human?
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| "How you doin'?" |
The face morphing station at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History suggests that a Homo Habilis version of Nath would have looked something like this guy.
No wonder Homo Habilis is extinct! That's a face only a mother could love.
But we did love this hall of human evolution, with Nath even returning to explore it on his own after we visited it together as a family.
The Museum houses countless fossils, life-size recreations, dioramas and skeletons of both living and extinct species.
It's a well-created but overwhelmingly huge parade of familiar and not-so-familiar animals.
Perhaps for this reason, the dinosaurs weren't what the boys picked out as their favourites when we asked them to reflect on the experience later.
It was the small, more singularly memorable moments in the visit.
For instance, Indy had sat for half an hour digging through a plate of stone fragments in search of tiny fossils and bones, guided by a museum staff member.
And we had a fun time capturing a sample of our own DNA (well, it could be the DNA of the lunch we'd just eaten, but don't spoil the story) in little wearable pendants at the Human Genome Exhibit.
Indy's very favourite though was the display of rare rocks and gems which included the infamous Hope Diamond.
The boys had spent a lot of time testing out the magnetic properties, fluoro colours and glow-in-the-dark nature of a variety of rare rock samples before moving on to the exhibit of gems.
The rocks were certainly very cool, but they had more of an impact than I'd expected.
Indy left the museum saying "I want to be a miner!" Luckily mummy knows about
Mining Oil and Gas Jobs!
Dash's favourite was the insect collection and live bee exhibit. He loved it so much that we revisited again on a second day to see what the bees were up to... Yep, still building their hive.
A cumulative total of three visits to this awesome museum is indicative of how much we enjoyed it.
