Wall of Mammals

To the left of the earliest horse, you'll see a wall of mammal skeletons reaching up to the ceiling. These bones are from the Cenozoic era- All the time since the dinosaurs went extinct. Without giant reptiles to dominate the landscape, mammals had a chance to undergo rapid diversification.

Wall of Mammals from Ted Rogers on Vimeo.

The birds behind you represent a startling trend. Much of life as we know it is disappearing at a rate not seen since the dinosaurs went extinct. Many of these extinctions are due to human encroachment. Some of these birds, like the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, simply lost the land where they lived. Others, like the Great Auk and Moa were hunted to extinction.

Sadly, there is no strength in numbers when it comes to human-caused extinctions. Eskimo Curlews may have numbered in the hundreds of thousands a century ago. It is thought that there were about 5 billion Passenger Pigeons when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The last Passenger Pigeon ever died in a Cincinnati zoo, in 1914.

If you will look to your right, you can see the remains of mammals that went extinct under more mysterious circumstances.