Thursday, September 12, 2013

drag2share: Darwin for a Day lets you play scientist, explore the Galapagos in Street View

source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/12/darwin-for-a-day/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget&ncid=rss_semi

Darwin for a Day lets you play scientist, explore the Galapagos through Street View

You can't turn back time and become the father of the theory of evolution, sorry. But, thanks to Google, Galapagos National Park, the Charles Darwin Foundation and iNaturalist you can pretend to be a 19th century British naturalist. Today, the Mountain View crew unveiled their 360-degree Street View imagery of the Galapagos Islands that it captured back in May. While you could certainly just drop the little yellow man down and start virtually strolling the paths of this volcanic archipelago with its countless unique species of flora and fauna, the groups have much more planned. For starters, there's Darwin for a Day, a site created by the Charles Darwin Foundation and iNaturalist that asks for people to play armchair scientist. You explore the islands through Street View and, as you spot plants and animals, you can catalog them and take notes on their appearance. Those observations will then be reviewed by researchers on the island who continue to di! scover n ew things about Galapagos' myriad endemic species.