Big Bend National Park has one of the richest collections of fossils in the nation – more than 1,200 fossils, including 35 Cretaceous-era spe-cies. But as recently as May 2013 a new fossil, Bravoceratops, was discovered.
Big Bend fossils are displayed at museums throughout the world, but never yet in the park where they were found. The park has so much to intrigue the public, yet until now there’s been no specialized display that visitors can see when they arrive. A new exhibit will change that. The Fossil Discovery Exhibit, featuring the park’s 130 million years of paleontological history, opens on Jan. 14. This impressive geological story will be displayed in a state-of-the-art, $1.3 million exhibit designed for all ages and abilities. One of the most exciting and interactive features of the exhibit will be touchable casts of ancient creatures designed for kids to climb on and discover up close.
Big Bend fossils include dinosaurs, mosa-saurs, pterosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, lizards, fish, mammals, insects, wood, vines, leaves and invertebrates such as bivalves, snails, sea urchins and ammonites, along with scientifically important fossils — species found nowhere else. The park is one of the only public places on Earth where visitors can see the K-T boundary, the geologic time frame that saw the mass extinction of many life forms, most notably the dinosaurs.
MOSASAURS, PTEROSAURS AND CROCODILES, OH MY! The stateof-the-art exhibit opens Jan. 14 and is designed for all ages.
An almost complete geological record spanning 130 million years documents a series of changing environments at Big Bend. As the Western Interior Seaway shrank and closed up in the Late Cretaceous, the ancient environments at Big Bend’s location changed. These four ancient environments will make up the four “chapters” of the story told in the new exhibit. Each of the four main exhibits – Marine Environment, Coastal Floodplain, Inland Floodplain, and Age of Mammals — will display a large “centerpiece” fossil replica, additional fossil replicas, a large mural depicting the ancient scene and interpretive mes-sages, including photographs of similar modern environments. A shady, airy pavilion will link the structures that house the main exhibits.
Life-size touchable bronze skull replicas will sit beneath the park’s most famous fossil, a pterosaur named Quetzalcoatlus with a 35-foot wingspan — the world’s largest known flying creature. After viewing the Inland Floodplain dinosaurs and the Volcanic Highlands mammals, visitors leaving the exhibit can explore a short trail that leads to the original mammal fossil quarry site and a scenic viewpoint. All fossil replicas will be museum-quality replicas, molded from the original fossils with every detail preserved.
In addition to educating and entertaining current visitors, the Fossil Discovery Exhibit will attract new visitors, families in particular, to come see what the Park has to offer.
