Extinction of the Dinosaurs, Global warming and the Origin of Primates

The Age of Mammals began about 66 million years ago when the earth experienced a mass-extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and resulted in a major episode of evolution and diversification of mammals on land. Approximately 10-million years later a rapid and large scale global warming event again dramatically changed life on land, marking the first appearance of nearly one-half of the modern orders of mammals at the beginning of the Eocene including the ancestors of horses and primates. Past global warming events documented in the fossil record tell stories of shrinking mammals, giant snakes, and how we might plan for a future on a planet without ice on the poles.