Google Arts & Culture app now lets you bring ancient creatures to your living room

Google’s Arts and Culture app is probably the perfect one for people wanting to venture out virtually. It lets you check out different museums, famous places, artworks and more all virtually. Google is now adding ancient creatures to its Arts and Culture catalogue.

Through augmented reality (AR), you can now use the Google Arts & Culture app to check out ancient animals inside your house (creepy!). This is similar to what Google offers with its 3D animals except that with this you’ll get to see prehistoric animals. Google has collaborated with Moscow’s State Darwin Museum and London’s Natural History Museum to bring “prehistoric animals back to digital life”.

You can use the Google Arts & Culture app that’s available for Android and iOS to check out these ancient animals. Through AR, the animals will be projected on the living world as it appears on your phone. The size of the animals will be accurate so you can actually compare how big or small it is to objects in the current environment. Google has given examples of some of these ancient creatures.

There’s one called the Cambropachycope which is “an ancient crustacean with a distinctive pointy head covered in tiny eyes”. This creature is captured staring at a cat which is almost the same size. Then there’s the oldest large filter feeder which is the fish that swims poorly, but it’s also the largest animal ever to live on Earth.

In addition to these animals, Google has also recreated a collection of unusual cultural artifacts you can explore on the app. In this catalogue, you’ll find artifacts like the pre-Inca “smiling god” Lanzón from way back in 500 BCE. You can also check out more artifacts like the Apollo 11 Command Module. There’s also thousands of paintings ranging from Frida Kahlo’s self portraits to The Kiss that you can use to virtually decorate your place.