What happened before
The Eocene began after a catastrophe: At the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago, a devastating meterorite impact led to the extinction of numerous animal and plant species, including most of the dinosaurs. It took more than ten million years for Earth's biodiversity to recover from this. Then, in an epoch we call the Eocene, our present animal world first appeared, for example with the birds and mammals we know. Our current special exhibition "Eocene - At the Beginning of Our World" deals with this period of Earth's history.
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Photo: iStock
The 50,000-year-old Barringer Crater in Arizona, 1200 meters wide and 180 meters deep, is one of the most famous meteorite craters in the world. It played a major role in research: for the first time, the age of the earth of 4.36 billion years could be estimated from the meteorites found there.
Photo: UHH/CeNak
A fragment of the famous Canyon Diablo meteorite, one of the most famous meteorites in the world, which left a crater about 1.5 kilometers wide in Arizona.