How the Universe Works: From the Death of the Dinosaurs to UsThursday, November 12, 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.

Nearly 66 million years ago, a ten kilometre wide asteroid struck the Earth just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This was the worst day in the history of our planet, kicking off a series of global-scale natural disasters, including rapid global cooling and heating, massive tsunamis, and forest fires. The entire planet changed in an instant, and all the non-avian dinosaurs which had ruled the Earth for millions of years went extinct. One of the survivors of this mass extinction event was a little burrowing creature no bigger than a rat, an ancient mammal that once lived underfoot of the dinosaurs, marking the beginning of the Age of Mammals. In this talk, we’ll learn about what happened after the dinosaurs went extinct and how these little creatures would evolve into the many incredible mammals that we see around us today, including us.