Professor Francis H. Snow started KU's collections in 1866, the summer before the University opened. The "Cabinet of Natural History", initiated by Snow and formally established by the University in 1868, has grown to become one of the major university m useums in North America. Various aspects of museum practice and mammalogy had their origin or early development at Kansas.
In 1881, Snow hired Lewis Lindsay Dyche as his assistant. Dyche became a full-time Instructor in Natural History in 1883. When Snow was named Chancellor in 1889, Dyche became Curator of Birds and Mammals, and began the present mammal collections. Dyche 's exhibit of large mounted mammals at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (and still on public display in the exhibit halls) led to construction of the museum building, begun in 1901 and completed in 1903. Dyche also influenced the developm ent of other natural history museums. For example, Joseph Grinnell met Dyche in Alaska and was inspired to pursue a career in natural history; in 1908 he came to Kansas from Berkeley for Dyche's advice on how to operate a museum.
In 1912 Dyche was succeeded by Charles D. Bunker, who perfected the dermestid beetle method of cleaning skeletal material. Bunker and Remington Kellogg, and later H. H. Lane and C. W. Hibbard, continued an active program of collecting, concentrating on the Great Plains region. In 1944, E. Raymond Hall, who had been a KU undergraduate with Bunker and a graduate student with Grinnell at California, became Director of the Museum and Chairman of the Department of Zoology. Under his aegis, the Modern Verteb rate Department was separated into the Divisions of Mammalogy, Herpetology, Ichthyology, and Ornithology. A new wing to the Museum was completed in 1963 due to Hall's acquisition of matching funds from the National Science Foundation and State Legislatur e.
Hall, at both Berkeley and Lawrence, trained a number of the currently or recently active senior mammalogists, including T. Alvarez, S. Anderson, R. H. Baker, E. L. Cockrum, W. B. Davis, J. S. Findley, R. B. Finley, H. H. Genoways, D. F. Hoffmeister, E. T. Hooper, J. K. Jones, Jr., P. Krutzsch, R. M. Nowak, H. W. Setzer, R. G. Van Gelder, T. A. Vaughan, B. Villa-R., and P. M. Youngman. These mammalogists have in turn trained their own students, and these students have trained another generation. The lat e Knox Jones served as curator of mammals from 1959 through 1971 and trained several mammalogists here including: D. M. Armstrong, E. C. Birney, J. R. Choate, H. H. Genoways, G. L. Forman, T. E. Lawlor, and C. J. Phillips. Robert S. Hoffmann served as a curator of mammals from 1968 through 1985 and produced a number of M.A. and Ph.D. students including: F. Cervantes, L. R. Heaney, J. W. Koeppl, E. A. Rickart, R. K. Rose, B. R. Stein, and M. D. Tuttle.
Maximum growth of the collection took place from 1945 to the early 1970's. Faunal surveys throughout Mexico and the western United States led to major publications on: northern Alaska (Bee and Hall, 1956), Chihuahua (Anderson, 1972), Coahuila (Baker, 19 56), Sinaloa (Armstrong and Jones, 1971; Jones et al., 1972; Armstrong et al., 1972), Tamaulipas (Alvarez, 1963), Veracruz (Hall and Dalquest, 1963), Colorado (Armstrong, 1972), Iowa (Bowles, 1975), Kansas (Hall, 1955; Cockrum, 1952; Bee et al., 1981), Ne braska (Jones, 1964), Utah (Durrant, 1952), Washington (Dalquest, 1948), and Wyoming (Long, 1965), and numerous systematic revisions. This work provided a foundation for Hall and Kelson (1959), and Hall (1981), The Mammals of North America. The synopsis of mammalian families by Anderson and Jones (1967), and Mammal Species of the World (Honacki et al., 1982), were compiled and edited at the University of Kansas. From 1945-1973, ca. 115,000 specimens were added to the collection. In recent years the coll ection has grown at a lower rate (ca. 1000/yr.), because collecting focuses on more restricted research questions. Use of the collection has broadened, with emphasis on ecological/morphological/evolutionary aspects of systematic studies. Currently, The c urators of the mammal collection are Robert M. Timm and Norman A. Slade, and the collection manager is Thorvald Holmes. In addition to the permanent staff, many students rotate through the mammal division as graduate curatorial assistants, undergraduate assistants and volunteers.