The University of Kansas Natural History Museum is part of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, which is itself part of the KU Biodiversity Institute.
The museum's galleries are in Dyche Hall on the university's main campus in Lawrence, Kansas. The galleries are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Dyche Hall has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since July 14, 1974; it was listed for its connection with Lewis Lindsay Dyche and for its distinctive Romanesque style of architecture.
The museum has developed some groundbreaking programs in the area of collection management and biodiversity informatics, which uses collections data for forecasting environmental phenomena. The museum has a 3D scanner and has used it to create 3D image scans of its invertebrate fossil collection. In 2006 and 2007, the museum's insect researchers and collection, along with its collection of bird skeletons and parts of its extensive mammal collection, were moved to a new facility on the university's West Campus. Among the collection's more unique and interesting specimens are several "jackalopes" (rabbits with Shope's papillomavirus disease), and Comanche (horse), a survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Famous quotes containing the words university, kansas, natural, history and/or museum:
“A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I have no connections here; only gusty collisions,
rootless seedlings forced into bloom, that collapse.
...
I am the Visiting Poet: a real unicorn,
a wind-up plush dodo, a wax museum of the Movement.
People want to push the buttons and see me glow.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)