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The National Museum of Natural History in Washington is celebrating its 100-year anniversary

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The National Museum of Natural History in Washington is celebrating its 100-year anniversary with a show on human origins featuring Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skulls for the first time outside Europe.

"It's about everyone, about who we are as a species," said Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program and curator of anthropology at the museum, standing next to a life-size bronze statue of a Homo Sapiens holding a piece of meat.

The museum's new 20.7-million-dollar exhibition hall, dubbed Hall of Human Origins, provides visitors an "opportunity to connect their personal life to the evidence that human species evolves over million of years," museum director Cristian Samper said as he unveiled the wing on Wednesday.

Visitors can gaze into the eyes of reproductions of Homo Erectus and Australopithecus who populated the planet for millennia. A photo booth transforms a curious onlooker's traits into those of a Homo Floresiensis (Hobbit) or Cro-Magnon.

Among the 300-some objects, including more than 75 exact replicas of skulls, are two prestigious guests loaned for three months by the Museum of Man in Paris.

"They are among the most famous fossils in the world and it's the first time they are on display in the US," said Potts as he stood before Cro-Magnon fossils that date back 27,000 years.

They were discovered in Dordogne, southwestern France in 1868, barely 10 years after Charles Darwin published his "Origin of the Species."

Next to them, lies a Neanderthal skull, which is around 50,000 years old and was found in the same French region in 1909.

It was just a year later, in 1910, that the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History opened its doors on the Mall, the grassy esplanade leading up to the US Capitol building in Washington.

Samper noted that 100 years ago, the human fossil record was scarce with only about a dozen specimens. "Now there are more than 6,000 fossils from whole skeletons to single teeth," he added.

Dabbling in Darwin's theory of evolution, which remains controversial in the United States, Potts said "you are surrounded by the evidence that the human being evolved over million of years in response to a changing world" at the exhibition hall.

But he was careful to note the museum also welcomed creationists.

"We offer a respectful and welcoming place for all people. People are able to see the evidence on their own," he said.

The hominid relics hailing from Les Eyzies de Tayac village "benefit this exhibition considerably by presenting original specimens you can meet just like regular people," said Alain Froment, anthropology collection director at the Musee de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) in the French capital.

"They lived and died for real."

The Paris museum, currently closed for renovations, may get a little inspiration from its American counterpart's "monumental presentation and spectacular reproductions," the French anthropologist conceded.

©AFP/Getty Images/File / Ezra Shaw

The Paralympics originated in 1948

VANCOUVER (AFP) - For some disabled athletes, the future of the Paralympics represents a return to the games' past as a rehabilitation programme for injured soldiers.

Five military veterans with disabilities competed on American teams in the Paralympics that closed here Sunday, said Charlie Huebner, chief of US Paralympics, while 19 Canadian and three British military members with disabilities observed the games and trained alongside Paralympic competitors.

The three countries are working together on programmes to encourage disabled soldiers and former soldiers to play sports and aim for Paralympics-level competition.

Australia is considering joining them, Jason Hellwig, chief executive of the Australian Paralympic Committee, told AFP. "It’s certainly something we’ve been looking at."

The formal involvement of the military marks a return to the original mission of the games, said Huebner.

The Paralympics originated in 1948 with archery competitions at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, an English rehabilitation centre for British World War II soldiers with spinal injuries.

Over time soldiers from other countries joined in, and when the 1960 Games were held in Rome -- then host of the Summer Olympics -- the name was changed to the Paralympics, referring to "parallel" to the Olympics.

But the focus of disabled sport organizations for soldiers is "not just to make the Paralympic team ... but to ensure young men and women have and opportunity to participate in sport," said Huebner.

©AFP/Getty Images/File / Jamie Mcdonald

Paralympics originated in 1948 as a rehabilitation programme for injured soldiers

"When people are physically active, are jumping back into life, research shows a higher proportion is successful in education, and career," Huebner said. "Sports is not only physical but mental rehabilitation to allow people to return to the norm."

The Paralympic flag was raised at the Games' opening March 12 by Sgt. Karen McCoy and Master Cpl Mick Trauner, Canadians in Canada’s four-year-old Soldier On sports programme for members and former members with disabilities.

McCoy, who lost her leg to cancer, is a hopeful for Canada’s wheelchair basketball team in the 2012 Summer Games in London, while Trauner -- whose legs were amputated after an injury in Afghanistan -- recently joined the programme.

The three British soldiers who spent the Paralympics in Vancouver "were not competing in the Games, but as 'Paralympics potentials'.

Andy Soule, a sit-skier on the American cross country team and a former American soldier, said at the Games in Whistler, "Sports have been absolutely fantastic for me to keep me active and give me something positive to do.

"I’m fit and I’m happy," said Soule, whose legs were amputated after a battle injury fighting in Afghanistan. "This is a dream come true."