Splendid isolation: South America was an island for millions of years, fostering an evolutionary explosion of unique mammal species

Natural History, June, 2009 by John J. Flynn

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EXTREME MAMMALS: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time opens at the American Museum of Natural History on May 16. This special exhibition explores unusual examples of both living and extinct species. Highlights include a fleshed-out model of a "walking whale" (Ambulocetus); a skeleton of the six-horned, saber-tusked, rhinoceroslike Uintatherium; a life-size model of Indricotherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived: one of the oldest fossilized bats ever found; and the smallest mammal known to have existed, the shrewlike Batodonoides vanhouteni. Organized by the American Museum in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa; and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the exhibition will remain on view in New York City through January 3, 2010. and then travel to other venues.

Curator of the "Extreme Mammals" exhibition, John J. Flynn is Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals and Dean of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His research focuses on the evolution of mammals in relation to geology and time scales. Author of more than a hundred scientific publications, Flynn has led dozens of paleontological expeditions in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Madagascar, and the Rocky Mountains.

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