After the Dinosaurs: Ice Age Mammals on view now through May 6, 2018 at the Reading Public Museum.
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.
The exhibition is produced by Kokoro Exhibits and is sponsored locally by The Friends of the Reading Public Museum and Bruce and Renee Dietrich Endowment Funds.
