Fossils are the past. Climate change is now. A radical exhibition shows how they’re connected.
A giant sea turtle that lived 83 to 81 million years ago, found in Kansas, is part of the “David H. Koch Hall of Fossils: Deep Time” exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The fossil hall will open June 8 after a five-year renovation.
When the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History took on the absorbing task of revamping its celebrated fossil hall, it was “dead obvious” that this would have to be one of the exhibit’s central themes, said Johnson, who became the museum’s director in 2012. Most of the planning on the new fossil hall was done during the Obama administration, which made action against climate change one of its top priorities. But even after the inauguration of President Trump, who has questioned the scientific consensus on the subject, Johnson said that there was never any hesitation about the exhibition’s approach.
Gigantic black pillars around the hall mark displays about mass extinctions, including the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago and humans’ devastation of animals in recent history. A scale model of a Virginia coal mine explains the origin of the word “fossil” in fossil fuels — coal beds are essentially compressed layers of dead plants, and often preserve the outlines of ancient plants in exquisite detail.
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