At the opening of the American Museum of Natural History's Brain exhibition, we caught up with curator Rob DeSalle and asked him about evolution.


First he told us what an evolutionary biologist does. In DeSalle's case, he uses computers to compare really long genome sequences and figure out where evolutionary change has occurred over time.

Then he explained that his biggest frustration with explaining evolution to people is the fact that they misunderstand the idea of "common ancestry." As he says here, in an interview conducted by Gaby Darbyshire for io9, people assume that evolution means we are descended from chimps. But that's not true - we are descended from a common ancestor we share with chimps. In other words, we have an ancestor in common with chimps, but we didn't evolve from chimps.


Learn more about evolution and the brain at AMNH's Brain exhibition.