Construction is poised to begin on the project in early August and wrap in October 2027, according to preliminary project filings registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) on Tuesday, May 26. The project featured an estimated $4.2 million sticker price, per TDLR filings, with its scope defined as the construction of a 2,100-square-foot, single-story museum building.
The historic dinosaur tracks aren’t only significant within Texas, but also in the United States at large. Their discovery, capturing footprints of a sauropod dinosaur and a theropod predator, marked one of the most substantial dinosaur fossil breakthroughs across North America, officials noted online. Found fossilized within limestone along the Paluxy River, the fossils date back to the Early Cretaceous period — a measly 100.5 to 145 million years ago.
“This project represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to safeguard one of Texas’ most iconic fossil discoveries,” Carolyn Connerat, the museum’s managing director, shared online. “With the Butlers’ support, we will preserve these remarkable fossils while creating new ways for visitors, students and researchers to engage with Texas’ deep natural history.”
The new display building comes almost 100 years after the trackways’ first discovery back in the 1930s. Paleontologist Roland T. Bird worked on that limestone removal process, with one slab of stone sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the second maintained in the Lone Star State.
For decades, UT officials had preserved the trackways in a tiny building next to the museum. That property has been closed to the public since 2013 amid environmental and structural threats to the fossils’ preservation. Alongside the new building, the property will include educational exhibits and programming as well as garden spaces for visitors.