After the Age of Dinosaurs

About This Event

What actually took over once the asteroid hit — a 45-foot titanoboa, six-foot penguins, and touchable fossil casts of the weird mammals, birds, and reptiles that filled the post-dinosaur world. Chicago illustrator Jay Ryan made original screen-print art just for this one, a nice local touch on a show this big.

The asteroid impact 66 million years ago didn't just end the dinosaurs — it emptied out the planet's top ecological roles overnight, and this show is built around what rushed in to fill them. Titanoboa, the actual largest snake known to have existed, was discovered in a Colombian coal mine and lived roughly 58-60 million years ago in a sweltering tropical Paleocene jungle, reconstructed here at full 45-foot length. The six-foot penguins are real too — Eocene-era giants from present-day Peru and Antarctica, a reminder that penguins spent a long stretch of their evolutionary history being considerably less cute and considerably more alarming.

Worth knowing: this one's already open — it debuted August 29, 2025 and runs through January 3, 2027 — so there's no single date to add to a calendar, just museum hours and a long runway to catch it. Tickets run $43 for adults, $34 for Chicago residents on the All-Access Pass, free for members.