Dinosaurs won’t be roaming the grounds at Brookfield Zoo this summer, but visitors can still get their fix of animatronic prehistoric beasts starting April 1 throughout the zoological park at 8400 31st St.
Ice Age Giants includes more than two dozen life-size recreations of animals that roamed the Earth – North America and Eurasia to be exact – some 2.6 million years ago when the Quaternary Ice Age began.
The animatronic animals – including a 15-foot-tall woolly mammoth, 20-foot-long ground sloth, 12-foot-tall raptoresque bird called a teratornis, a saber-toothed cat called a smilodon and others – will be on display throughout the 216-acre park through Oct. 30.
In addition to the animals, whose heads, eyes, mouths and tails move to provide life-like effects, there will be signage along pathways to take visitors back in time 20,000 years providing fun facts about the animals, where they lived and how they compare to their modern relatives.
Illustrations present a timeline of five ice ages — Huronian (2.4-2.1 billion years ago), Cryogenian (720-635 million years ago), Andean-Saharan (450-420 million years ago), Late Paleozoic (360-260 million years ago) and Quaternary (2.6 million years ago to present) – and lay out theories about how the Ice Age creatures became extinct and how some of the same threats remain for animals today.
There is no additional admission charge to see the exhibit. Regular zoo admission and parking charges apply. For more, visit CZS.org/IceAgeGiants.