Museum Message

About sixty-five million years ago, back in the Mesozoic Age, it’s believed that a huge asteroid hit the earth. One theory holds that its impact kicked up a massive dust cloud which blotted out the sun and chilled the planet’s surface killing off the dinosaurs and many other organisms. Today, according to a new, major exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, it’s the impact of human activity, not asteroids, which is putting thousands of species at risk. Richard Schiffman reports.