You can spend a billion years in a day at Guizhou Geological Museum. But actually, a few hours are more than enough to experience eons of Earth's history.

It also offers a venue to do so in a region with a reputation for being among the most geologically flamboyant on our planet. Guizhou is synonymous with the karst spires that stab the skies like spears above complexes of caves that coil beneath the bases of the limestone mountains.

Prized displays include the largest sea lily fossil found in China; a 26-meter strata wall, revealing contiguous bands of rock as they accumulated over 900 million years; the complete skeleton of a nearly 10-meter-long Guanling Ichthyosaur and its feces, packed with crushed bivalves; and samples of some of the earliest animal embryos, which date back more than 600 million years.