C. D. Bunker

Charles Dean Bunker (1870-1948)

A list of "Bunk's Boys" reads like a "Who's Who in Vertebrate Natural History" for the mid-1900s. These are the workers who received their training at the KU Museum under C. D. Bunker.

Bunker had only a grammar school education. He began work in the museum as a taxidermist in 1895. Bunker became an assistant curator in 1907 and was in charge of recent vertebrates. In this position he fos­tered the development of research collections of worldwide note. He established rigid standards for cata­loguing of specimens and demanded that students keep careful records on all specimens. He trained students in fieldwork in Kansas and the south­western United States. He encour­aged them to collect and prepare specimens in such a way that they would last for future scientists to study. He was modest and published little, preferring that his apprentices receive the credit for noteworthy observations. He generously helped needy students with his own funds.

Although Bunker encouraged stu­dents to study many kinds of verte­brates, his own interest lay with birds. He perceived the importance of skeletal specimens long before most other naturalists appreciated them and began building KU's splen­did avian skeletal collection. Along this line, he perfected the "dermestid beetle method" of preparing speci­mens-using the larvae of these in­sects for cleaning the bones. This technique is now used in museums throughout the world.

In the last years before his death in 1948, Bunker's greatest pleasure seems to have come from learning of the successes of the naturalists that he had trained.