I’ve long heard praise for the Whiteside Museum of Natural History, and we finally made a visit.

This place is a gem and a Texas treasure – a national treasure, really.

Located in Seymour, Texas, the museum is adjacent to the world’s best fossil fields for Permian specimens.

I’ve been to natural history museums in New York, Washington, London, Houston, and invariably, the Permian fossils are from Seymour.

The dimetrodon is a star attraction. Bless its heart, it gets put too often in the dinosaur bin at the toy store, but this sail-back giant is far more closely related to you and me than to the dinosaurs.

Animals like dimetrodon fascinate me – already we can see mammalian traits evolving in an almost 300 million year old animal – note the very mammal-like teeth in my photos.

I was in awe. The story of human evolution is rooted so deeply in the tree of life.

Dimetrodon is a picture of what was to come.

The real star of the museum and its heart is Chris Flis, the paleontologist responsible for most of the finds and the curator of the collection.

I went to see the Permian, but there’s so much more – including a mammoth molar Chris found when he was ten!

It’s so worth the trip – fossil prep is out and open for viewing and fossil lovers of all ages will be delighted.