Field Museum digs into the strange era that followed dinosaurs

When people think of prehistoric life, they tend to jump to two behemoth bookends — the towering dinosaurs of the Mesozoic era and then the woolly mammoths of the ice age. But what about the millions of years in between?

The new exhibit “After the Age of Dinosaurs” at the Field Museum shines a spotlight on this oft-overlooked chapter: the Paleocene, the period immediately following the asteroid impact that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

“It’s a really important time in Earth’s history that just isn’t on most people’s radar,” said Ken Angielczyk, the Field’s fossil mammal curator and MacArthur Curator of Paleomammalogy. “The roots of the modern world are there. Mammals and modern birds undergo big evolutionary radiations, and flowering plants really start to dominate