With Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time, the American Museum of Natural History explores the surprising and often extraordinary world of extinct and living mammals.

Featuring spectacular fossils and other specimens from the Museum’s collections, vivid reconstructions, and live animals, the exhibition examines the ancestry and evolution of numerous species, ranging from huge to tiny, from speedy to sloth-like, and displays animals with oversized claws, fangs, snouts, and horns.

Through the use of dynamic media displays, animated computer interactives, hands-on activities, touchable fossils, casts, taxidermy specimens, and a colony of live sugar gliders—extreme marsupials from Australia—the exhibition will highlight distinctive mammalian qualities and illuminate the shared ancestry that unites these diverse creatures.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections—Introduction, What is a Mammal?, What is Extreme?, Head to Tail, Reproduction, Mammals in Motion, Extreme Climates, Extreme Isolation, and Extreme Extinction—and offers extensive detail on the evolutionary history and great family tree of mammals.

Entertaining and informative programs for adults, children, and families will take place throughout the run of this exhibition and will include large-scale events like the Milstein Science Series: Identification Day (June 13, 2009); the unique Extreme Mammals Camp (June 29–July 3, 2009 and August 3–7, 2009); popular live animal presentations such as “Wild, Wild World: Bats” (October 24, 2009); and much more.