Mass Extinctions – Big Five

Over the course of Earth’s four-billion-year history, life has faced, and survived, five cataclysmic events that reshaped the planet’s biodiversity. Known collectively as the Big Five, these mass extinctions were triggered by extraordinary natural forces such as asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions and dramatic climate shifts. Yet each extinction also paved the way for new life to emerge, propelling evolution forward in unexpected ways.

With ‘Mass Extinctions – Big Five’, the National Museum of Nature and Science explores these pivotal moments in our planet’s biological history. Supervised by a team of ten leading researchers from the museum, the exhibition reconstructs the story of survival and adaptation through fossils, rocks and cutting-edge paleontological evidence.

Visitors will journey from the Ordovician’s vanished seas and the rise of ancient forests in the Devonian to the catastrophic end-Permian extinction (the largest in history) and on to the Triassic upheavals that set the stage for the age of dinosaurs. The show culminates with the dramatic asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous, allowing mammals, and ultimately humans, to thrive.

Featuring rare specimens, full-scale replicas and new research from international collaborations, ‘Big Five’ offers an awe-inspiring exploration of how destruction has given birth to renewal in the grand saga of life on Earth.