The American Museum of Natural History is letting visitors travel back to the final days of the dinosaurs with Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs, an exciting new exhibition that shows how an asteroid impact changed life on Earth forever 66 million years ago.
Museum goers will get a closer look at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction, the last of the five major mass extinction events, and how it ultimately led to our human lineage. Some researchers believe that another mass extinction may occur as a result of human activities. The exhibition will further highlight the important work currently underway to sustain Earth’s biodiversity.
Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs debut date
The new exhibition will open to the public on November 17th, 2025, but open for Member previews on November 14th, 2025.
Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs highlights
The entire exhibit will feature both fossils and fossil casts, immersive animations, life-sized models and more to illustrate the cataclysmic event from extinction, survival, recovery an adaptation over time.
Visitors can look forward to:
- A 27-foot-long life-sized model of a mosasaur attacking a 30-foot long-necked plesiosaur
- A diorama showing the rich diversity of Cretaceous life
- A panoramic video experience of the Asteroid impact, followed by earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, acid rain, and near-total darkness.
- A personality quiz to assign you a Cretaceous lineage that you can later uncover whether it persisted after the asteroid
- Life-sized models of the largest and smallest mammals to ever exist that are now extinct
- Videos of conservation action and how it can protect against biodiversity loss
- Collage of the diversity of life on Earth
- Interactive exhibit that features tools used to track near-Earth objects to possibly prevent another asteroid impact
Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs tickets
- Adults: $30
- Seniors and students: $24
- Children (3-12): $17
- Members: Free
Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs curators
This upcoming exhibition is curated by five Museum scientists whose expertise spans relative fields. This includes the Museum’s Macaulay Curator in the Division of Paleontology Roger Benson, a dinosaur paleobiologist (fossil amphibians, reptiles, and birds and fossil plants), Mark Norell, curator emeritus in the Division of Paleontology (bird origins), Michael Novacek, curator in the Division of Paleontology (mammals), Neil Landman, curator emeritus in the Division of Paleontology (invertebrate fossils), Denton Ebel, curator in the Division of Physical Sciences (meteorite specialist), and Ana Luz Porzecanski, director of the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (consultant).
