LONG BEFORE NEW MEXICO was a landlocked mix of deserts, mountains, and mesas, it was a land of seas, beaches, and lush forests. Plant-eating lizards with tall, bony sails scurried along its shores, sharks stalked the shallow waters, and gigantic insects tracked beneath ancient trees. This was the Paleozoic era, when the dinosaurs were still more than 100 million years in the future and the tropical Land of Enchantment lay just south of the equator.
What we know about this distant epoch was once locked away in academic papers and museum storage rooms, but now it can be experienced firsthand in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science’s Hall of Ancient Life. Opened in February, the 3,000-square-foot space showcases more than 300 never-before-seen fossils collected from within the state.
“This hall fills in the beginning of the fossil record in the state,” says Spencer Lucas, the museum’s curator of paleontology. “It’s really a testimony to how much New Mexico has changed, not just then, but ever since.”
The Hall of Ancient Life welcomes visitors into an underwater world.
Photograph courtesy of Sarah Whaley/NMMNHS
Upon entering, visitors encounter a shallow sea that covered the state south of Truth or Consequences 500 million years ago and come face-to-exoskeleton with the state’s oldest fossil: an arthropod known as a trilobite. From there, explore changing environments and evolving plant and animal life through fossils and scientifically accurate paintings and sculptures that capture 30-foot-long armored fish, 150-foot-tall conifer trees, and gigantic millipede tracks that were discovered near Abiquiú.
“The artists really brought this ancient world to life,” Lucas says of the panoramic scenes and recreations of reptiles, insects, and aquatic specimens. Visitors can also dive deeper through interactive digital displays and even touch ancient tree logs from the late Paleozoic era. “We didn’t hold back,” Lucas says. “We put all the good stuff out.”
Read more: The handcrafted cyclorama at the Aztec Museum captures the spirit of the Old West.
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Don’t miss these three fossils at the Hall of Ancient Life.
Gordodon. With its two big, beaverlike teeth, this five-foot-long lizard lived near modern day Alamogordo. Discovery of the sail-finned herbivore rewrote the textbooks due to its unusual mouth and teeth, explains Spencer Lucas, the museum’s curator of paleontology. Although it was discovered a decade ago, there is still only one known Gordodon in the world. “A lot of museums wouldn’t put this out,” he says, “because it’s too precious.”
Eoscansor. Found in northern New Mexico, the kitten-size fossil is the oldest known tree-climbing reptile. Don’t be put off by its diminutive stature, however. “All important evolutionary change occurs at small sizes,” Lucas says.
Dracopristis. Shark fossils are hard to come by, especially because sharks don’t have bones. But the fins, jaws, and other cartilage of the Dracopristis are visible in this rare specimen, discovered in the Manzano Mountains near Albuquerque. The largest shark of its day at seven feet long, Dracopristis was a fierce predator.
