University of Nebraska State Museum
Morrill continued to donate money to the museum throughout his life, which in turn allowed Barbour to send out over one hundred expeditions.
The third floor of the museum houses a variety of exhibits including Explore Evolution, Jurassic Dinosaurs, Rocks and Minerals, Weapons Throughout time, and First People of the Plains.
[5] The museum has been gathering its paleontology collections since 1891, when the Director Erwin Barbour began to excavate fossils from Western Nebraska.
[10] This exhibit combines interactive touchscreen technology with a vast phylogenetic database to provide a fun educational experience for users of all ages.
Once a user is actively using the interactive technology, they are more likely to spend enough time to gain a substantial understanding of core ideas in evolutionary science.
Some pieces in the collection include stone arrowheads used by Native Americans in the Great Plains, Amazonian blow darts, Zulu hunting spears, Japanese and Samoan armor, and firearms from Asia, the Middle East, and the Western hemisphere.
The scientists whose work is included within the exhibit are: Charles Wood, Sherily Fritz and Edward Theriot, Cameron Currie, Kenneth Kaneshiro, Rosemary and Peter Grant, Svante Paabo and Henrik Kaessmann, and Philip Gingerich.
Although it is designed to stimulate curiosity in young museum visitors, the Explore Evolution exhibit contains vast stores of information that will keep even the most educated evolutionary scientist interested.
[16] Additionally, in February 2008, the Nebraskan State Museum installed its first mountain lion provided by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission after it was struck and killed by traffic on Interstate 80.
Chemical analysis of the mountain lion's claws suggests it had traveled from the Black Hills of South Dakota along the Missouri or Elkhorn Rivers.
A few shown animals include the Kobus ellipsiprymnus (Swimming Waterbuck), a medium-sized antelope that is at a "lower risk," and the Diceros bicornis (Black Rhinoceros) who are now "critically endangered" due to overhunting.Mueller Planetarium was a gift to the university from Ralph S. Mueller, a Cleveland industrialist and inventor of the alligator clip.
Jack Dunn hosted the planetarium's first laser light show featuring electronic music using a car speaker surround system and two slide projectors in 1977.
Through working with Hayden by ILDA of California, the show was optimized using a high-contrast dots and lines display to aid the visually impaired.
[21] The University of Nebraska State Museum offers educational community events that allow a closer view of natural processes.
[21] In addition, the University of Nebraska State Museum offers rotating hands-on activities for a range of younger ages.
[22] The University of Nebraska State Museum is also involved in research pertaining to anthropology, botany, entomology, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, zoology, and parasitology.
[23] From 2007 to 2015, the State Museum partnered with biomedical researchers, artists, educators, writers, and youth to create a public campaign aimed at expanding diverse audiences' knowledge about microbes and infectious disease.
Artists created comic strips that proved to be more student-interactive than standard textbooks, and through the Omaha Science Media Project, students and teachers were offered a two-week immersion experience at virology research labs at the Nebraska Center for Virology and the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
