Texas Memorial Museum
Hill Country Trail Region
The 1936 Texas Centennial spawned the Texas Memorial Museum, which opened in 1939 as Austin’s fi rst 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 fl ying 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 fi nds. Outside are the dinosaur tracks of a 60-foot-long sauropod, discovered north of Glen Rose. The Hall of Texas Wildlife spotlights diverse native species.