The Boyertown Area Times

Ice Age Mammals exhibit on display now for limited time

- From Emily Moore

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 bestknown 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 (sabertooth­ed 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 Reneé Dietrich Endowment Funds.

 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO ?? Coelodonta
SUBMITTED PHOTO Coelodonta

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