The

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...

Natural History Museum is part of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, a KU designated research center dedicated to the study of the life of the planet. The museum's galleries are in Dyche Hall on the university's main campus in

Lawrence, Kansas Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas River, Kansas and Waka ...

. The galleries are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Dyche Hall has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

since July 14, 1974; it was listed for its connection with

Lewis Lindsay Dyche Lewis Lindsay Dyche (March 20, 1857 – January 20, 1915) was a notable naturalist and also the creator of the Panorama of North American Plants and Animals, which was featured in the Kansas Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. ...

and for its distinctive Romanesque style of architecture. The exterior is constructed of local

Oread Limestone The Oread Limestone is a geologic unit of formation rank within the Shawnee Group throughout much of its extent. It is exposed in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Iowa. The type locality is Mount Oread within Lawrence, Kansas. It preserv ...

, while the window facings, columns, arches, and grotesques are carved from

Cottonwood Limestone Cottonwood Limestone, or simply the Cottonwood, is a stratigraphic unit and a historic stone resource in east-central Kansas, northeast-central Oklahoma, and southeastern Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. It is the lowest member of the B ...

. Dyche Hall is also the site of one of only three Victory Eagle statues in Kansas, once used as markers on the

Victory Highway The Victory Highway was an auto trail across the United States between New York City and San Francisco, roughly equivalent to the present U.S. Route 40. It was created by the Victory Highway Association, which was organized in 1921 to locate and m ...

. Among its more than 350 separate exhibits, the museum is famous for its Panorama of North American Wildlife, part of which represented Kansas in the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago, and was the impetus for the funding and construction of Dyche Hall and its Natural History Museum between 1901 and 1903. Modeled after a church in France, Dyche Hall was designed to house the Panorama in the "apse" of the entrance gallery. The museum is also renowned for

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...

, the only survivor on the U.S. Cavalry side of the

Battle of the Little Bighorn The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Nor ...

; for its extensive exhibits of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, and other fossils from the Kansas Chalk; and most recently for its newest displays of mammalian skulls, the parasites of sharks and rays, and the

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

archaeology of Costa Rica. The Biodiversity Institute, with more than 10 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, and archaeological artifacts, is one of the world's leaders in collection-based studies of systematics, evolution, phylogenetics, paleobiology, past cultures, biodiversity modeling, and in providing digital access to collection-based biodiversity data

biodiversity informatics Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. Modern computer techniques can yield new ways to view and analyze existing information, as well as predict ...

, including deploying these data for forecasting environmental phenomena. The Institute's collections, faculty-curators, staff and students are housed in six buildings across the KU campus, with the most recent expansion occurring in 2006–2007, when the Division of Entomology, along with parts of the ornithological and mammal collection, were moved to a new facility on the university's West Campus.

References

External links

Environmental Studies Program
(ESP) – Related resources
University of Kansas Natural History Museum Website
{{authority control University and college buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Kansas University of Kansas campus University museums in Kansas Natural history museums in Kansas Museums in Douglas County, Kansas Tourist attractions in Lawrence, Kansas 1901 establishments in Kansas Paleontology in Kansas National Register of Historic Places in Douglas County, Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

See also

References

External links