A history of Ornithology at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum

by Richard F. Johnston

Museum of Natural History and Department of Systematics and Ecology, 602 Dyche Hall, The University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045-2454

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Citation: Johnston, Richard F. 1995. Ornithology at the University of Kansas. Pages 95-112 in Davis, W. E., Jr., and J. A. Jackson (eds), Contributions to the history of North American ornithology. Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club No. 12, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This paper was Contribution No. 2106 from the Museum of Natural History, The University of Kansas, Lawrence.

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Interested readers can view a PDF version of the whole article here. Below is an excerpt on one of the KU Natural History Museum's pioneering members.

Charles Dean Bunker (right) had become an assistant at the Museum in 1895. Bunker created the first complete catalog of the museum collections, sometimes getting data by word-of-mouth from Dyche (Hall 1951). He became Assistant Curator of Birds and Mammals in 1907, and Assistant Curator in Charge in 1909, when Dyche was named State Warden. Bunker emphasized specimens as research and teaching resources rather than items for display. He also continued the tradition of expeditionary field work in collecting vertebrates, specialized in birds, and concentrated on the preparation of whole skeletons. He developed innovative techniques for cleaning bones, emphasizing methods for the maintenance of colonies of dermestid beetles, the larvae of which were already known for their ability to clean bones precisely and without damage. Under Bunker's guidance, the ornithological skeleton collection at KU had achieved national recognition by the 1930s. Bunker's view of the Museum as a generator of new knowledge, a center for research rather than one primarily for passive display, was one of his important insights.

Bunker also was an extremely effective teacher in the setting of a research museum, and his record of undergraduate instruction is hard to match. Alexander Wetmore was an undergraduate at KU and worked in the bird collections under Bunker. Wetmore later completed postgraduate degrees at Washington University, developed into one of the leading ornithologists of all time, and eventually became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Another future Smithsonian scientist (ultimately Assistant Secretary for Science) was Remington Kellogg, also a student with Bunker, specializing in mammalogy. Other Bunker undergraduates achieving high status in ornithology were Jean M. Linsdale, later of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at Berkeley and Hastings Natural History Reservation, and William H. Burt, also of MVZ and the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. E. Raymond Hall was one of "Bunk's Boys" also going on to MVZ, ultimately returning to KU to lead the Museum of Natural History to international prominence. Claude Hibbard and Ruben Stirton also studied with Bunker and went on to fame as mammalian paleontologists, the former at Michigan and the latter at Berkeley, withall preserving the broad orientation to vertebrate biology they learned at Kansas with Bunker. Bunker retired in 1942.

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