Annual Meeting
About Austin

The Texas Memorial Museum
The Texas Memorial Museum (TMM) is a keystone unit of the Texas Natural Science Center, which also includes the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory, the Non-vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory and the Texas Natural History Collections. The Hall of Geology and Paleontology in the TMM and a life-size mount of the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus greets visitors as they enter the museum through the Great Hall. Admission is free and directions to the museum will be given in your confirmation letter. More details about the museum and its activities can be found at www.utexas.edu/tmm.

Collections Visitation
TMM staff and students will be full participants at the SVP Annual Meeting. For that reason, its collections will be closed for the duration of the meeting (October 17-20). Collections will be open through Tuesday, October 16, at 5 p.m. and will re-open Sunday, October 21, at 10 a.m. Anyone wishing to visit the collections should contact Lyndon Murray and Tim Rowe by Monday, July 30, 2007, to make arrangements.

Anyone wishing to borrow specimens should contact Lyndon Murray. In order to process loan requests in a timely fashion and prepare relevant paperwork, arrangements must be made by July 30, 2007. TMM welcomes and encourages the return of borrowed specimens at the meeting. Let us know in advance if you intend to return specimens so TMM can prepare all relevant paperwork in advance and arrange a drop-off location at the Hilton Austin.

Contact:

Tim Rowe
Director, VPL
512-232-5512
rowe@mail.utexas.edu
Lyndon Murray
Interim Collections Manager
512-232-5517
lkmurray@mail.utexas.edu


Other Museums

Blanton Museum of Art
The newly-opened Blanton Museum of Art is the largest university art museum in the United States, with a spectacular building situated at the southern end of the central University of Texas (UT) campus. The museum sits at the northeast corner of Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, across the street from the Texas State History Museum. Paid parking is available at the Brazos parking garage on the UT campus or in the underground garage at the Texas State History Museum across the street. Visit the Web site at http://blantonmuseum.org for information on exhibits, tours and facilities. Call 512-71-7324 for more information.

Texas State History Museum
The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum opened in 2001 with three floors of exhibit space, an IMAX theatre and a café with indoor and outdoor seating. The Museum is located at the southwest corner of Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. An underground garage is available for paid parking. Visit the Web site at www.thestoryoftexas.com for information on exhibits, tours and facilities. Call 512-936-8746 for more information.

Dino Pit at Zilker Park
The Dino Pit is an outdoor paleontology exhibit at the Austin Nature and Science Center in Zilker Park. It is a family-oriented site where visitors can conduct excavations in several sand-filled pits to discover casts of Texas fossil vertebrates. Each pit represents a different time and fauna (Permian terrestrial, Cretaceous marine, Cretaceous terrestrial, early Tertiary and Late Pleistocene). It is located at 301 Nature Center Drive in Austin. Call 512-327-8180 for more information.

Hartman Prehistoric Garden at Zilker Botanical Gardens
The Hartman Prehistoric Garden is a 1.5-acre living exhibit in the Zilker Botanical Gardens featuring plants that represent major extant lineages of groups that were dominant in the late Mesozoic. The garden is nested within limestone cliffs, four ponds and a large waterfall. A centerpiece of the garden is a bronze statue of an ornithomimid dinosaur crafted by the Texas Memorial Museum exhibits designer John Maisano. The Garden is located at 2220 Barton Springs Road. For more information, call 512/477-8672, or visit www.zilkergarden.org/gardens/dino.html.