Mountain lions and mule deer, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs and falcons – West Texas has a rich assortment of wildlife. But rich as it is, it's only the present chapter in the history of life. And that history contains volumes.

Across ages, complex communities of animals have emerged and flourished on the land we inhabit. They flourished, and they faded – leaving their traces, fragments of their story, in the land itself.

At the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, visitors encounter some of those vanished creatures, drawn from the fossil record of West Texas. The university's paleontology collection contains even more.

Meet quetzalcoatlus, the largest flying animal ever kno...