mission to mars GIF

Credit where credit is due dept.:

This gorgeous GIF of fish morphing into reptiles morphing into dinosaurs morphing into woolly mammoths chased by cavemen, currently making the internet rounds, is a clip from the Brian De Palma movie Mission to Mars (2000). At the film's climax, a hologram of a long-extinct Martian shows U.S. astronauts a 3D video of his planet being hit by a comet millions of years in the past, then the DNA-seeding of the Earth by Martian scientists in the months before their civilization is completely annihilated. The DNA grows into Earth's variegated lifeforms.

Mission to Mars had a huge budget and is a visually stunning film despite its somewhat sci-fi conventional, Spielbergesque ending. Critics completely trashed it and it died a box office death even with Disney bankrolling (coming on the heels of De Palma's success with the first Mission Impossible movie). Disney notwithstanding, the movie is pretty dark, featuring an astronaut being torn to pieces in a Martian dust-tornado and Tim Robbins' face turning into a freeze-dried skull when his spacesuit faceplate shatters. Gary Sinise spends the entire movie in a depressed funk.