VISITORS can come face to face with an ancestor from 20,000 years ago at a new museum exhibition.

A member of North-East living history company Time Travellers has set up camp at the Hancock Museum, in Newcastle, for the next two weeks, taking visitors back to the age of cave paint- ings.

The museum's resident caveman will tell stories of what life was really like for Stone Age people, as part of the museum's Upright Ape exhibition.

Steve McLean, museum curator, said: "We hope the caveman event will help bring the story of our ancestors to life and make visiting the Upright Ape exhibition an even more enjoyable experience.

"The event has been planned especially for the Newcastle Science Festival, which aims to encourage people to take an interest in science and find out how it influences their everyday lives."

The exhibition tracks the evolution of humans, from our ancestors' first tentative steps on two legs, to the rise of modern humans, using hands-on displays, life-size reconstructions and real fossils.

Exhibits include a model skeleton of "Lucy", an important early human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia and a genuine 7ft mammoth tusk, plus hair and bones from the creature.

The caveman will be telling his stories until Friday, April 25.