The murals in the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives were all painted by Charles Knight between 1911 and 1930. Charles R. Knight was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1874. At the age of six, he was struck in the eye by a stone, which left him legally blind. Remarkably, at the age of twelve, Knight began to study art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Knight studied at the Metropolitan Art School and the Art Students' League. Early in his career, Knight began illustrating for McClure's magazine.

His work got the attention of Jacob Wortman and Henry Fairfield Osborn at the American Museum of Natural History. An interest in depicting wild animals led to his association with the American Museum of Natural History and, eventually, with its Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. There, he became the first artist to seriously study and reconstruct the appearance of extinct animals. He was asked to paint a life restoration of Elotherium, a giant Miocene pig for the fossil collection on exhibit. Knight would continue to provide illustrations of both ancient and modern life for the American Museum and become deeply involved with the institution with the institution for fifty years. Knight's paintings have stirred the imaginations of generations of museum-goers, and are still admired today.

Four of Knight's murals, forming a series titled "The Age of Mammals in North America," were completed in 1930 and were cleaned for the Fossil Hall restoration in 1996. They remain in the same positions in the Museum's new hall as in the first Hall of Fossil Mammals, which opened in 1895 under the direction of Henry Fairfield Osborn, the Museum's first curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and later Museum president. Three other murals are from a series titled "Life in the Ice Ages," completed between 1911 and 1921. They originally hung in the Hall of the Age of Man. These three murals were also newly restored and mounted in the new hall.

Among Knight's most famous artwork at the American Museum of Natural History are his depictions of dinosaurs. Based on new material from Wyoming, these reconstructions were the first paintings of dinosaurs interacting in very dramatic ways. Painted in the impressionistic style and influenced by Japanese artists, Knight's artwork remains a magnificent example of early restorations of past life.