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University of Kansas Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center (Visit this link)

We study the life of the planet for the benefit of the earth and its inhabitants. We document the fantastic diversity of life on earth. We uncover its intricate patterns. We tell the grand stories that emerge from this research. And we educate graduate students, the next generation of biodiversity scientists. The museum maintains research inventories of seven million plant and animal specimens representing life on earth, past and present. The inventories and their associated information are used for undergraduate, graduate, and public education; research; and public and professional service.

The fossil exhibits with extinct mammals, dinosaurs, reptiles and fishes are especially popular. The Panorama of North American plants and animals, the centerpiece exhibit, contains realistic scenes of animal and plant life from Alaska to Mexico. It’s the world’s largest diorama. You’ll also find mammals, birds, and endangered habitats, along with live bees in a working hive, live snakes, and live fish in simulated Kansas stream habitats.

The KU museum also leads the nation in using information technology to harness biodiversity data from research inventories worldwide — the result of 300 years of the biological exploration of the planet. This vast storehouse of knowledge previously lay largely untapped. The results: better understanding of natural environments, enhanced power to predict environmental phenomena, and knowledge to inform natural resource management.

For both teaching and research uses, natural history inventories were started at KU before it opened in 1866. Within 20 years, they held 150,000 specimens of plants, mammals, birds, fishes, fossils, reptiles, and amphibians. Exhibits and education activities grew based on these research inventories. After World War II, collecting expanded beyond the Great Plains into the rest of the New World and beyond.

http://www.nhm.ku.edu