Queueing for three billion years might sound like an ordeal, but the Natural History Museum has made it a thrill. When the daily stampede of visitors in their thousands now exits the pedestrian tunnel connecting South Kensington station to the grand London institution, they will embark on a journey of several aeons.
“We want to get people to walk through geological time,” says Dr Paul Kenrick, lead scientist for the museum’s new evolution garden. He is standing at the tunnel exit, where two cliff faces of rock sheer up on either side of a ramp, forming a rugged canyon of stacked strata. It looks like the result of a violent tectonic rupture: the rocky walls shoot forcefully outwards, as if fissured from the depths of the Earth, framing views of a prehistoric forest of ferns beyond.
