Texas Science & Natural History Museum
Hill Country Trail Region
The 1936 Texas Centennial spawned the Texas Science & Natural History Museum (formerly the Texas Memorial Museum), which opened in 1939 as Austin’s first state museum. The museum explores natural science through displays of artifacts selected from the five-million-specimen collection of the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. Soaring above the entry hall is the skeleton of the largest known flying creature, a 40-foot-wingspan Texas Pterosaur that lived in West Texas 65 million years ago. The Hall of Geology and Paleontology showcases other dinosaur and fossil finds. Outside are the dinosaur tracks of a 60-foot-long sauropod, discovered north of Glen Rose. The Hall of Texas Wildlife spotlights varied native species.