The Bean Life Science Museum opened a new exhibit on November 20, 2025, inviting students and faculty from all across campus to literally walk on the display. Hundreds came to see the museum’s remodeled basement, which has been transformed into the Evolutionary Tree of Life, a branching and complex representation of evolution traced throughout the Earth’s history.
The Tree of Life is a story of diversity,” Dr. Michael Whiting, director of the Bean Life Science Museum, said during the opening ceremony. “We have more than 30 million species on our planet today. Every one of those magnificent species is tied together through the Tree of Life.” Some of the specimens on display are now extinct, while others have never been shown before at the museum.
The exhibit is a circular hallway that utilizes the floor, walls, and even the ceiling in its design. The heart of the display is found at the viewer’s feet, where a roadmap of evolutionary changes across time guides participants to different displays. As evolution occurs, new branches run from the floor up onto the walls, where glass cases depict life at that level of the tree. The experience is interactive, with birds and bats flying overhead while giant touchscreens encourage further exploration.
Charles Darwin is credited for first symbolizing the history of evolution as a tree, but it has taken scientists over a century to recover enough of the fossil record to put the pieces together. Even then, “the difficulty with the Tree of Life is that it’s hard to visualize,” Dr. Whiting admits. “To fix this, we’ve attempted to create an exhibit that allows you to walk along it and see how it grows.”
This achievement was made possible through the help of eighty different life science students, who worked for three years to complete the project. Many of those students and their families attended the exhibit opening. Dr. Whiting thanked them for their efforts at the end of the invitational, then cut the ribbon over the entrance to the Evolutionary Tree of Life to a host of cheers.
At the center of the exhibit is an auditorium, where a video of life science faculty and students emphasizes the goal of the display. “Through this exhibit, we hope you will come closer to understanding our great Creator,” Dr. Whiting concludes. He hopes that by engaging with the Evolutionary Tree of Life viewers will also discover how they are connected to all of God's creations, as well as the importance of preserving the diverse life all around us.
The new exhibit is now permanently open to the public and admission is free. For more information about the museum, view their website.