After the Dinosaurs: Ice Age Mammals

Enter the Age of the Mammals, a survey of the Cenozoic era. Explore cornerstones of the Ice Age, from gregarious carnivores to massive herbivores. Watch members of an Australopithecus (one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species) family engage in routine activities in a cave in Africa: a mother cradling her baby, a father keeping a lookout for threats, and a juvenile banging a bone against a rock while another chomps on food. Spend a day in the life of a Smilodon (saber-toothed cat): frolic in the snow with a Smilodon pack, and listen to a Smilodon bellow as it attacks a Megatherium (sloth).

Then enter the land of herbivores. Stand beneath a Platybelodon slicing vegetation with its jaw like a scythe. Travel the tundra with a massive woolly mammoth, and then wallow in the mud with the largest land mammal to have ever lived, a Baluchitherium. Witness the gigantic, flightless Diatryma wandering near a watering hole, while a Coelodonta (woolly rhinoceros) roams the snowy landscape in search of grasses to eat. Walk with the truck-sized Doedicurus, an ancestor of the modern-day armadillo, and a dog-sized Hyracotherium, the first horse predecessor, as they munch on vegetation.

This exhibit runs every day February 3, 2018 – May 6, 2018