Exhibition - Growing a backbone:Rise of the vertebrates

Heads, jaws, teeth, backbones, limbs.  The evolution of these key features has allowed the vertebrates – animals with backbones – to diversify to include species as different as sharks, frogs, turtles, eagles, elephants, and humans.  But how and why do these features evolve?

Modern and fossil specimens from the museum collections join with scientific discoveries – including new research at the University of Cambridge – to reveal how adaptations for feeding, swimming, flying, running, and crawling have evolved.  Stretching across the museum galleries, this exhibition will reveal the evidence for major turning points in evolution, such as the origins of jaws and teeth, how turtles got their shell, the deep history of the human spine and how snakes have lost, and may have regained, their legs.

Exhibition and Museum entry FREE