1 EARLIEST LIFE
Hamelin Pool, Western Australia (3 billion years ago) Visit living stromatolites, pillars of cyanobacteria that are the modern relatives of the planet鈥檚 primordial slime.
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2 EARLIEST ANIMALS
Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada (575 million years ago) This rock shelf on the stormy Atlantic coast hosts thousands of bizarre fossils from the Ediacaran period. The delicate squiggles that look like squashed seaweed or pizza slices are in fact remains of the earliest multicellular life. Guide required.
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46.62掳 N 53.15掳 W ()
Tours: +1 709 438 1100
3 EXPLOSION OF 鈥榃EIRD WONDERS鈥�
Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Canada (540 million years ago) Deep in the Rocky Mountains lies evidence of the world鈥檚 first complex life, reminiscent of beetles and lobsters (see background image). Fossils litter the loose shale. Guide required.
51.43掳 N 116.51掳 W ()
Tours: +1 800 343 3006
4 DINOSAURS
Zhucheng, Shandong, China (100 million years ago) The world鈥檚 largest dino graveyard is right here, and a tourist park is being developed.
35.99 N掳 119.4掳 E ()
Tours: Mr Wang Kebai, on +86 15153650001
5 DEATH OF THE DINOS
Gubbio, Italy (65 million years ago) See the meteorite dust thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The thin seam of the stuff, discovered by Luis and Walter Alvarez of the University of California, Berkeley, is plain to see in an outcrop near the Bottaccione restaurant.
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6 MAMMAL MANIA
Messel pit, near Frankfurt, Germany (47 million years ago) See the remains of pygmy horses, bats and the early primate nicknamed Ida. A tour guide is required at what is still an active dig.
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7 WHALE OF A TIME
Wadi Al-Hitan, Egypt (37-40 million years ago) The site is famous for its fossil find of a whale with feet, capturing the evolutionary moment when whales were moving from the land back into the sea. Guide required.
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Tours:
8 EARLY HUMAN
Sterkfontein, South Africa (2-3 million years ago) Delve into the caves of the 鈥渃radle of humankind鈥�, home to Mrs Ples, the most complete skull ever found of Australopithecus africanus. It helped prove that the skeletons here were of early humans rather than apes.
26.02掳 S 27.73掳 E ()
Tours: +27 14 577 9000
9 NEANDERTHALS
Neander valley, Mettmann, Germany (30,000 years ago) On the village outskirts you can meet Homo neanderthalensis, who ended up taking a side path on the route map of human evolutionary history. The cave where the specimens were found isn鈥檛 on the tourist trail, but there is a great museum.
51.25掳 N 6.97掳 E ()
10 CHARLES DARWIN LIVED HERE
Down House, Orpington, Kent, UK (modern) The country home of Charles Darwin, where he lived for 40 years and wrote the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, is open to the public.
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Read more: Wonder lust: Scientific expeditions without a PhD