Dec. 31 -- More than a decade after the last major exhibit opened at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, a new display focused on the Paleozoic era is coming soon.

Some 600 fossils -- about half of them never before displayed -- will occupy a renovated Origins Hall when the exhibit opens, which is expected sometime in February. Wave-shaped walls in the renovated space track the movement of the land and its creatures from sea to land.

Exhibit curator Matt Celeskey calls the coming display "3,000 square feet of cool."

A cast of a fossilized Dimetrodon that has graced the hall for decades will be incorporated. Museum director Anthony Fiorillo wasn't initially a fan of keeping what he called "the ugliest piece in the old hall" and offered to help Celeskey haul it to the dumpster.

But when the piece was removed to make way for construction, Fiorillo noticed a familiar name on the invoice stuck to the back: Nicholas Hotton III, his own paleontology mentor. That changed Fiorillo's mind.

Now he says the Dimetrodon "ties into the messaging that we're trying to do here: to be a platform to inspire the next generation of people in our building, to just get them to be curious about the world around them."

Although Dimetrodon is often confused for a dinosaur -- "if you go to Walmart and buy a bag of dinosaurs, you'll get one of these," it is from an entirely different period -- the Paleozoic, said paleontology curator Spencer Lucas.

The Paleozoic era is often overshadowed -- literally -- by its succeeding periods, which were characterized by behemoth dinosaurs. While the era had its own "monsters", they were much smaller than the titans of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Dimetrodon, a top predator, grew to around eight or nine feet long.

Objects from the Paleozoic period aren't as massive, "but they are super important. And New Mexico has an incredible record," Lucas said.

The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science exhibit will be one of just a few around the nation that focuses on the Paleozoic. It was a period of environmental and evolutionary change in the state, from historic jungles to tropical bays to shallow oceans and to the state's first deserts.

"It will be a totally unique destination for people who are interested in New Mexico paleontology," Celeskey said.

The exhibit will highlight seven areas of the state. For Celeskey, standout areas include the preserved tropical bay at the Kinney Brick Quarry in the Manzano Mountains, Canyon de Cobre, which features the tracks of giant millipedes and early amphibians, a preserved beach studded with preserved footprints in the Robledo Mountains north of Las Cruces and the imprint of a sponge reef ecosystem in the Guadalupe Mountains.

Collecting fossils for the new exhibit has taken decades. Lucas, who joined the museum just a few years after it opened in 1986, has been there for it all, taking hundreds of trips throughout the state. He recently took a trip to Carlsbad to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and brought back a chunk of pink salt -- a remnant from a shallow sea that once covered the Permian. When it evaporated, it left an underground layer of salt that gives WIPP its unique geologic features.

Lucas pointed out a fossil of a 7-foot shark with dramatic spines -- Dracopristis hoffmanorum, or the Godzilla shark, which was discovered at the Kinney Brick Quarry outside of Tijeras.

"All these fossils are just waiting," Lucas said. "They're rested. They're ready. This guy's been waiting [millions of years.]"