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Article: Fossil life styles. (Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and their Extinct Ancestors at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY)
- Article from:
- Popular Science
- Article date:
- October 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Bonnier Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The critic Hugh Kenner once wrote that most museums are places of "hushed didactic strenuousness." The "newest exhibition halls in the American Museum of Natural History in New York serve as a brilliant rebuttal.
The two halls that make up the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives. opened to the public last May, contain some 250 specimens representing 300 million years of evolution. This is the largest and most scientifically important array of fossil mammals - 85 percent of them real, not casts - to be seen anywhere in the world.
And this is not a dull and dusty collection of old bones. The creatures - many of them awesome in ...