Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology A visitor at the Penn Museum, Nick Loffredo. sizes up his hand with a gorilla's in the museum's new interactive exhibit on evolution that opens this Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

From hominid to homo sapien, human evolution has shaped who you are.

And this weekend you can discover more about your past at the opening of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's newest exhibit, "Surviving: The Body of Evidence," an exploration of the human body and its evolutionary roots. The celebration will begin on Saturday at 11 a.m.

The exhibit signifies a "total disjoint" from the rest of the artifacts-based museum by focusing on a single idea: evolution, said curator and Penn Anthropology professor Janet Monge.

The display aims to help visitors gain "understanding of the evolution process by looking at [their] own bodies," said Monge.

In order to achieve this goal, the interactive exhibit begins with a presentation of the uniquely human characteristics that visitors will learn are due to the process of evolution. Next, visitors are invited to experience the time line of evolution through a series of touchable human casts.

According to Monge, students will be most interested in the 16-foot larger-than-life-size robotic woman, or the "Body of Evidence," which allows visitors to look through the clear skin and observe the bones underneath.

Also in the same room, the display "Scars of Evolution" explains common human maladies that are a result of evolution, such as osteoporosis.

Though the exhibit is geared toward visitors ages 12 and up, Monge credits her students along with those of co-curator Alan Mann of Princeton University for inspiration. "This hall is dedicated to our students, who taught us how to teach about evolution," said Monge.

Opening day events will include speeches by both of the curators, the Philadelphia Zoo on wheels and free massages all day. A full calendar can be found online on the museum's Web site.

"Surviving: The Body of Evidence" also kicks off Penn and the rest of Philadelphia's year-long celebration of the Year of Evolution, in observance of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Other Penn programs related to evolution will be the Penn Reading Project book for next year and several symposiums that will occur in the fall.

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