The traditional trip to a museum is being transformed by handing visitors virtual reality headsets that allow them to experience attacks by giant sea scorpions and fearsome ancient worms.

Visitors to David Attenborough’s First Life exhibit at London's Natural History Museum are transported back more than 500 million years to the first explosion of life deep under the sea, using the new technology.

Fossils from the museum’s vast collection come to life with the help of a pair of headphones and a headset containing a Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone that’s responsible for the visual trickery.

Giant sea scorpion attacks and encounters with fearsome ancient worms await guests wearing virtual reality headsets at London’s Natural History Museum. This still from a VR headset shows an early lifeform

The imaginative exhibit, comprising an immersive 15 minute session, opened today.

Participants are able to look around in any direction they choose and see an underwater environment in immense detail by wearing Samsung's Gear VR Innovator Edition headset.

This includes long extinct virtual reality creatures based on the museum’s own research and collection of fossil such as the fearsome Anomalocaris and the spined and worm-like Hallucigenia.

Visitors to David Attenborough’s First Life exhibit are transported back more than 500 million years to the first explosion of life deep under the sea, using the new technology (pictured) and David Attenborough (also shown) will accompany them on their voyage of discovery in the form of a narration

The Gear VR headset makes use of the smartphone’s accelerometer, gyroscope and processing power to track head motion, enabling people to look around and the view to change accordingly.

The device is powered by the phone, which clips into the front and the screen and shows specially-written software to put on the show.

Sir Michael Dixon, director of the museum, said: ‘This experience is a glimpse of the dawn of life on Earth.

‘Narrated by broadcaster and naturalist Sir David a long-standing friend of the museum, this is the first time virtual reality storytelling has been used by any museum as a significant rise of their programme.

Wearers of the headset can see extinct virtual reality creatures (pictured) based on the museum’s own research and collection of fossils

‘[It] builds on the National History Museum’s pioneering role in redefining what it means to be a museum of the natural world in the 21st century.

‘Through state-of-the-art technology such as this we are always looking for new ways to challenge the way people think about the natural world.

‘The fossils underpinning this experience are part of our extensive collection of 18 million specimens.

With an initial run of three months, the exhibition is already proving popular with the opening weekend selling out within ten days. Tickets cost £6.50 or £4.50 for members.

Sir David said it is ‘marvellous’ to be involved in the project.

He was keen to stress how important of a step this technology is, adding: ‘It’s another advance in the road of communication, it can take you geographically to all sorts of places, it can take you to a great cathedral, it can take you to a rainforest, it can take you to the bottom of the sea or, as we’ve done here, it can take you back in time. So there’s an infinity of experiences like this we can produce.

‘There have been a lot of key moments in the development of television even during the time I’ve been in it but I think this in the new one, it will change the nature of programming.

‘Programmes will still be there but this will be in addition.

‘What you are doing now is not presenting a narrative like you do on television, when you’re in the hands of the producer who tells you how the thing is going to develop, what this does is take away the demands or the instructions of the producer and lets you do it yourself because you decide that you want to look over there or up here or over there.

HOW THE VIRTUAL REALITY HEADSETS WORK AT THE EXHIBITION The Samsung Gear VR headset uses the display of a Samsung Galaxy S6 phone. This is mounted in a specially designed headset, which also includes basic head tracking capabilities. Users do not need to connect the gadget to a power supply of computer, as with other VR headsets. They see specially written software, which makes it feel as if they are really swimming in prehistoric seas. Advertisement

Participants are able to look around in any direction they choose and see an underwater environment in immense detail by wearing Samsung's Gear VR Innovator Edition headset (pictured)

THE EXHIBIT IN BRIEF David Attenborough’s First Life reveals the dawn of life on Earth from 540 million years ago. During the 15-minute experience, visitors dive through ancient seas with narration by Sir David Attenborough. The experience uses Samsung’s latest wearable technology, the Gear VR Innovator Edition virtual reality headsets powered by the Galaxy S6 smartphone Advertisement

‘As things develop this will become more complex and there will be more information and more things you can do as you look into it’.

Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, was also clear in what he sees as the many potential uses for virtual reality technology.

After experiencing the exhibit, he said: ‘That was an absolutely breath-taking experience.

‘What we would all understand immediately from this, I don’t know how you felt but I didn’t want it to end at the end, it took me a while to turn to Sir David to congratulate him because I was so absorbed.’

He said the technology could be used by teachers to make their lessons extra engaging.