I once thought of a building showing history of life on Earth. Next to 'living fossils' would be dioramas and models of extinct animals, many touchable and climbable - e.g. swinging bank shaped like a giant centipede.
Among others:
Paleozoic:
-Cambrian sea: coral reef with invertebrates
-chambered nautilius
-horseshoe crabs in water and scorpions on land
-Australian lungfish
-Giant salamander in water, tuataras on land
Mesozoic:
-rainforest exhibit with saltwater crocodiles, komodo dragons, cassowaries and cuscus
-underwater exhibit with sharks and sea turtles
Cenozoic:
-rainforest with malayan tapirs, mousedeer, tree shrews, tarsiers
-Savanna with warthogs, antelope, white rhino
-Ice ages: shared paddock of musk oxen, reindeer, saiga, yak, Przewalski horses, bison, chamois, moose, red deer, waterfowl. Nearby lions and spotted hyenas, arctic foxes and brown bears.
Could be also cool to put some rarely seen animals if one can get them: Chilean monito del monte, long-beaked echidnas, tarsiers, hoatzins etc.
Difficult, perhaps, would be avoiding the contrast between live and dead exhibits. Either live animals would look insignificant, or models would look fake.
There used to be an exhibit like that, but much more basic, in Emmen. One small diorama showing Earth 200 mln years ago was astonishing. It was completely barren land and live horseshoe crabs underwater.
Another problem is that paleontology dates very fast. Every year there are new discoveries and our idea how extinct animals looked like changes.
