Waco

Dinosaurs and Ancient Peoples of Far West Texas

by Randall Kinzie

DON’T MISS

Visit Alpine visitalpinetx.com

Museum of the Big Bend Sul Ross State University campus Alpine, TX (432) 837-8730 museumofthebigbend.com

As its name would imply, the Museum of the Big Bend provides an excellent introduction to the Big Bend region. Located in Alpine on the campus of Sul Ross University, the museum’s purpose has remained constant: to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret the cultural, historic and natural materials that relate to the prehistory, history and cultural diversity of the Big Bend region of Texas and northern Mexico.

The native rock museum building was built in 1937 with funding from the Texas Centennial Commission and in cooperation with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Today, the museum is engaged in a major expansion project with completion scheduled for early 2023.

The Museum of the Big Bend offers some of the most well-curated fossil, rock art, and interpretive installations of any museum. Perhaps the museum’s most popular exhibit for dinosaur enthusiasts is the lifesized replica of Quetzalcoatulus northropi is suspended with outspread wings over museum visitors (pictured above). Discovered in Big Bend National Park, it is the world’s largest flying creature to ever live.

There’s more, of course, to ancient Texas than invertebrate fossils and ferocious dinosaurs. The Big Bend region has been home to a variety of human cultures for roughly 12,000 years. One such group known as the Livermore people hunted and gathered at the highest elevations of the Davis Mountains between 800 to 1350 CE. The museum’s “Tall Rock Shelter” exhibit is an exquisite reveal of how some of the ancient peoples lived.

In addition to the pictographs discovered at the Tall Rock Shelter, two caches of arrowheads were also found on that site. A cache of 1,700 arrowheads were uncovered in 1895 by T.A. Merrill and C.C. Janes and were donated to the museum in 1929. Much later, David Means and his two sons unearthed another cache of 1,200 points. Known as the John Z. and Exa Means Cache, it is also in the protection and custody of the museum.

Whether it’s dinosaurs or ancient peoples, the Museum of the Big Bend continues to tell the fascinating stories of the area.

ALPINE