The Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport is well-known to the local community of Northwest Louisiana for its incredible dioramas depicting the agriculture, natural resources, and natural history of the state. Located at the crossroads of east–west Interstate 20 and north–south Interstate 49, the museum attracts travelers from all over the country and the world. The collections include art, history, historical artifacts, and cultural materials that support the museum’s educational mission.  

The most outstanding collections are the archaeological artifacts. The last diorama constructed was under the direction of archaeologist Dr. Clarence H. Webb, based on his published research of the Poverty Point World Heritage Site, and it includes artifacts from the site. Other exhibits concentrate on the Red River Basin, home of the Caddo Nation, the Mississippi River tribes, and Bayou Teche’s Chitimacha Tribe. 

This fall and continuing through 2026, LSEM will celebrate eighty-seven years of service to the public. Under the Secretary of State Nancy Landry and with the sponsorship of LSEM Friends, the museum will launch several new paleontology exhibits and programs.  

In celebration of Louisiana’s state icons, the museum has launched a new exhibit on the official state fossil, the petrified palmwood (Palmoxylon) from the Catahoula Formation, dating back approximately thirty million years. There are ten specimens in the exhibit that came from Swamp Beach, about one hundred miles from the present Gulf. A line of volcanic ash buried some of the palmwood displayed, and during fossilization the black ash replaced the wood’s interior structure.  

In cooperation with Sci-Port Discovery Center in Shreveport, LSEM will display a Basilosaurus cetoides skull and jaw, discovered in 1980 by Louisiana State University geologists in the Cane River at the Montgomery Landing Site in Grant Parish. Basilosaurus was a marine mammal, similar to a whale, and the earliest large mammal in the era after dinosaurs became extinct. The plaster cast measures forty-seven inches long and has a ferocious set of teeth. Paleontologists believe that this marine mammal’s broken teeth caused an infection that hindered its hunting ability and possibly caused its demise, forty million years ago. 

As a Smithsonian Affiliate member, the museum will host a Smithsonian traveling exhibition in 2026 called Sea Monsters Unearthed. Based on an archaeological dig in the Republic of Angola, Sea Monsters will feature a full-size skeleton of a mosasaur, a plesiosaur fin, and a fossilized giant sea turtle. They all shared the same Atlantic Ocean environment and died out in a mass extinction sixty-six million years ago.  

Visitors can also explore the recreated dig site where fossils were unearthed, as well as trace the formation of the Atlantic Ocean to make connections between the past and our seas today. The Smithsonian will provide STEM educational programing and paleontologists for the installation and speakers bureau. If you’ve never seen a mosasaur or a Basilosaurus, this is a wonderful opportunity. The Sea Monsters Unearthed exhibition runs from January 31, 2026, through May 10, 2026. Visit our website at laexhibitmuseum.org.