{"id":41869,"date":"2025-11-17T03:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/41869\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T03:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:34:07","slug":"sneak-preview-of-groundbreaking-new-exhibit-at-the-american-museum-of-natural-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/41869\/","title":{"rendered":"Sneak Preview of Groundbreaking New Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The entrance to exhibition. Photo by Meg A. Parsont.<\/p>\n

By Meg A. Parsont<\/p>\n

Opening November 17th at the American Museum of Natural History, \u201cImpact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs\u201d chronicles the collision of an asteroid the size of Mt. Everest with our planet 66 million years ago \u2014 when dinosaurs roamed the earth \u2014 and how that impact changed life on our planet forever.<\/p>\n

\"\"Impact theater, Alvaro Keding and Daniel Kim\/\u00a9 AMNH.<\/p>\n

This exhibit takes us on a journey from the immediate, cataclysmic effects of the asteroid collision, which resulted in the extinction of 75 percent of living species, to the recovery and renewal that occurred subsequently over the span of millions of years. Museum President Sean M. Decatur says, \u201cThis exhibition is not just the story of the end of an era, it\u2019s about the beginning of ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon entering \u201cImpact,\u201d visitors are immediately plunged into a\u00a0 multi-sensory experience chock-full of cutting-edge scientific evidence about the impact and its aftermath. The exhibit features a wealth of real fossils and fossil casts, intricate life-sized models of creatures spanning the Cretaceous Period, and mammal species that evolved after the impact.<\/p>\n

A six-minute immersive panoramic-video experience brings to life the moment that the asteroid \u2014 traveling about 45,000 miles per hour \u2014 struck Earth on what is now the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula, with the force of billions of nuclear weapons. Dramatic imagery reveals the effects of the collision: 1,000-foot-high tsunamis, earthquakes, and forest fires, and the world plunged into darkness beneath a shroud of rock, gas, and soot.<\/p>\n

The exhibit also features a soundtrack that subtly but powerfully evokes what was happening on Earth during each of the phases covered in the exhibit: Life Before the Impact, The impact, Life after the Impact, and Protecting Earth.<\/p>\n

\"\"Triceratops model. Photo by Meg A. Parsont.<\/p>\n

The animals represented in the exhibit are life-size replicas, ranging from a 27-foot-long mosasaur \u2014 among the most formidable marine reptiles of the Cretaceous Period \u2014 attacking a 30-foot long plesiosaur, to an 18-foot long Triceratops pulling down a tree, to the largest and smallest land mammals that ever lived and are now extinct: Indricotherium, which weighed more than three times as much as an African elephant; and the tiny shrew-like Batodonoides, which weighed less than 1 gram.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn intersection of arts, sciences, and communication,\u201d as lead-curator Roger Benson referred to it, \u201cImpact\u201d is an exceptionally family-friendly exhibit that is both accessible and informative. Engaging interactives throughout include a Which Cretaceous Creature Are You? personality quiz; a wheel that, when manually rotated, releases the eerie scent of forest fires; a digital introduction to the sophisticated tools used today to track near-Earth objects that allow \u201ctesting\u201d of deflection technologies that may help prevent another asteroid impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes this exhibition so exciting is how much of the story we can now tell through science,\u201d Benson said. \u201cAdvances in paleontology and geochemistry have given us an unprecedented look at what happened before, during, and after the asteroid hit\u2014including how ecosystems collapsed, adapted, and ultimately flourished again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cWeb of Life\u201d collage ,Alvaro Keding and Daniel Kim\/\u00a9 AMNH.<\/p>\n

In the concluding Protecting Earth portion of the exhibit, video stories explore the many ways that conservation action can protect against biodiversity loss, including controlling introduced species, protecting habitats, and regulating industry. The final display in the exhibit, \u201cWeb of Life,\u201d a collage by artist Clare Celeste B\u00f6rsch, celebrates the beauty and diversity of life on Earth, while acknowledging the urgent reality of species loss.<\/p>\n

American Museum of Natural History, floor 4, LeFrak Family Gallery, 200 Central Park West
This is a ticketed exhibit; entrance is not included in the general admission ticket.<\/p>\n

For more information click \u2014 HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The entrance to exhibition. Photo by Meg A. Parsont. By Meg A. Parsont Opening November 17th at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24031,19496,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-41869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-amnh","tag-dinosaurs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}