(light music) Hi.

Welcome to Mid-America Science Museum.

I'm Casey and I work here, and I want to show you how cool it is.

Mid-America Science Museum is in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Our museum has been here for over 40 years.

That's right, since 1979.

And since then, we've made a lot of changes.

Right now, our special exhibit is all about dinosaurs.

Expedition Dinosaur, Rise of the Mammals.

Come with me, and let's go find out about it.

Expedition Dinosaur, Rise of the Mammals.

That's kind of a confusing title, isn't it?

Dinosaurs aren't mammals.

We're mammals.

So this exhibit is all about the story of that transition from the age of the dinosaurs all the way up until us.

How did we get here?

We all know that dinosaurs lived a long, long time ago, and they don't live here anymore.

And that was a really big mystery for a long time.

But scientists and paleontologists finally think they figured out what it is.

It was a really, really big asteroid.

Around the time that this asteroid hit, lots of big changes happened to the Earth.

Big, scary changes.

And sadly, most of the dinosaurs just didn't make it through all those big changes.

But other animals did.

Dinosaurs were starting to change into birds, like, did you know that some dinosaurs actually had feathers and there were other animals, weird looking things that had never existed before called mammals.

Now, they may not look like you and me.

In fact, I think they look like really big rats.

But, they were what led to us.

So this whole exhibit is about finding out that story and how it happened We also have dinosaurs you've never seen before, and maybe your favorites might not look the way you expect.

Like I said, there's feathers.

There's fur.

There's weird colors.

You're just going to have to come see it for yourself.

So I've asked my friend Emma here to help me teach you more about asteroids.

Emma, have you ever heard of an asteroid before?

No.

No.

So an asteroid is a really, really big rock in space.

Meteors are smaller rocks that tend to come into our atmosphere.

And if they make it all the way through and hit the ground, they're called a meteorite.

So we think that the dinosaurs may have been made extinct by a really big asteroid crashing into Earth.

What does that actually look like?

So I have a model of the Earth here, doesn't it looks like the earth?

It's got some flour with some charge iron filings on top.

And you are going to be my asteroid.

So would you pick up one of those marbles?

All right.

I'm going to get one, too.

OK, great.

We are going to be asteroids, so we're going to hold our marble.

I'm going to hold mine low.

Will you hold yours really high up here for me?

Excellent.

There we go.

When I count to three, we're going to drop it.

Ready?

One, two, three.

Whoa!

What do you notice?

Emma: The green one went farther and the blue one went higher.

Very good.

So I think that totally makes a difference.

But maybe marbles are a little too small.

We should try something a bit bigger.

So what do you notice about these two balls?

Are they the same, or are they different?

They're different.

How are they different?

One's heavier and one's ligher.

(gasps) You know this already, Emma.

Are they about the same size?

Emma: Kinda.

Casey: Yeah, they're pretty close.

Do you want the lighter ball or the heavier ball?

Emma: Heavier.

Casey: All right.

Ready?

We're gonna do it from about the same height.

One, two, three.

Whoa!

Emma, what happened to yours?

Emma: It went down.

Casey: It went down.

How about mine?

Emma: It went, it only made.

Casey: Oh, my goodness.

What do you notice about all this white stuff?

Where'd that come from?

The ground.

Yeah, exactly.

So when Emma's asteroid hit the ground, it made what we call a crater A crater is just a hole in the ground and threw all of that white stuff up.

So what happened when it hit the Earth is we don't have flour, we have dust and dirt, and all that big dust cloud went up in the air, and it covered up the sun, and we couldn't see the sun anymore, and that caused a huge climate change.

Would you like to drop another asteroid?

Emma: Yeah Casey: I thought you might.

All right, pick another spot.

Hold it up nice and high.

Ready?

Three, two, one.

Oh, look at the size of the crater.

You made a really big hole.

Let's see how deep it is.

Oh, my goodness.

I think if something like that hit the earth, it would definitely cause a problem, don't you think?

I think we're also going to be really happy that asteroids don't hit us, too.

So if you want to learn more about what happened when the giant asteroid hit the earth and how things managed to survive and reconquer the earth and repopulate it with mammals and birds and all the things we know today, then you need to come see our exhibit, Exhibition Dinosaur Rise of the Mammals, here at Mid-America Science Museum.

Oh.

(laughs)