SCIENCE SCAN

EVOLUTION

Long before smartphones

MEanderthal app,

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Ever wondered what you'd look like as a Neanderthal? No? Well, find out anyway with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's first mobile application, MEanderthal, which morphs photos of people into cave men. Users can choose among three species to morph into: Homo floresiensis, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis. Our most recent ancestor, the Neanderthals, lived from about 200,000 to 28,000 years ago and had, according to the Smithsonian's human origins Web site (http://www.humanorigins.si.edu), a "large middle part of the face, angled cheek bones and a huge nose for humidifying and warming cold, dry air." With the new free app, male MEanderthals get beards, and most of the females get long, dark hair that manages to look both wispy and coarse. To learn more, go to http://humanorigins.si.edu/resources/multimedia/mobile-apps.

-- Rachel Saslow