PART 1: AN OVERVIEW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA STATE MUSEUM'S RESEARCH DIVISION OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY

• Profile
• Products
• Public outreach and informal education
• Undergraduate and graduate education
• Academic research and publications
• Highway salvage program
• The collection

PROFILE
The Division of Vertebrate Paleontology ("the Division") is a research and teaching arm of the University of Nebraska State Museum, and is affiliated, through its two curator/professors, with the University's Department of Geosciences. The Division operates under a directive to conserve and protect the state's vertebrate paleontological resources, and to maintain a repository (collection) of the state's vertebrate fossils. The Division currently is staffed by two tenured curators (Dr. Michael Voorhies and Dr. Robert Hunt), a collection manager, and three preparators, along with two paleontologists who staff the Highway Salvage Program. The Division represents 162 years of collective professional experience in the state of Nebraska, and is ranked fifth nationally by the National Science Foundation.

PRODUCTS
While the primary functions of the research division center on academic research and instruction, the Division has also produced:

Discovered by Dr. Voorhies in 1971, this locality conserves a 10-million year old fauna (rhinos, horses, camels, and many other taxa) in an unparalleled state of preservation. After extended investigations and excavations by the Division during the 1970s, the site was acquired by the state of Nebraska in 1991. Under the management of the University of Nebraska State Museum and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, both a visitors' center and a barn protecting an in situ exhibit were constructed. Exhibits were designed, constructed, and mounted by the Division. The park was fully staffed by the Division during its first three years of operation, and continues under the oversight of Dr. Voorhies. The park receives 31,000 visitors annually.

Visitors' Center, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (Harrison, Nebraska)

During the 1980s, Dr. Robert M. Hunt and Division field crews re-opened the historical fossil quarries at Agate. This research led to a detailed understanding of the geological and environmental setting of Agate's 19.2 million year old mass-death assemblage. When in 1987 the National Park Service received funding to construct a visitors' center at Agate, Dr. Hunt and the Division were contracted to design, develop and install the center's spectacular paleontology exhibits. These completed exhibits were dedicated in 1997. The visitor center received over 17,000 visitors in 2001.

As a result of the Division's research in Nebraska's panhandle region, the Trailside Museum was established in 1961 and is operated by the University of Nebraska State Museum. Its exhibits from the early years of Nebraska paleontology are of historical as well as scientific interest; the discovery in 1962 by Division paleontologists of the Crawford mammoths, and the display of one of these, greatly enhanced Trailside's role as a site for informal science education in western Nebraska. Efforts by the Division are underway to renovate the exhibits at Trailside and display both mammoths as they were discovered, tusks entwined.

During the late 1980s-early 1990s, the Museum received funding to convert Morrill Hall to a fully climate-controlled exhibit facility, and to rehabilitate its historic collection of skeletal mounts. Exhibit restoration was conducted by Division staff. Climate-control paved the way for the updating of three paleontology exhibit areas in Morrill Hall, including the Mesozoic and Elephant galleries. The content and design of these halls were again a product of the Division. Morrill Hall receives 190,000 visitors annually.

The Division has contributed exhibit materials to numerous institutions including the Denver Museum of Natural History, Dallas Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and Florida Museum of Natural History.

The Division has also helped to create and install exhibits, large and small, at many sites around the state including: Scottsbluff National Monument, Ash Hollow State Park, Niobrara State Park, Ponca State Park, Wildcat Hills Nature Center, Dawson County Museum, Frontier County Museum, Custer County Museum, Hitchcock County Museum, Red Willow County Museum, Webster County Museum, Palmer Museum (York, NE), Hastings Museum, Headquarters of the State Department of Roads (Lincoln, NE), District 5 Headquarters, State Department of Roads (Bridgeport, NE), and the Laurel-Concord High School (Cedar County, NE).

PUBLIC OUTREACH AND EDUCATION
Informal science education and public outreach are central to the Division's goal of enhancing citizens' knowledge of, and responsible appreciation for, fossil resources. This commitment is first addressed through exhibits the Division produces for our flagship museum, Morrill Hall. Its paleontology galleries and dioramas are treasures prized by the citizens of Nebraska.

The Division also provides guided tours of its collection area in Nebraska Hall; on average 100 school groups and civic organizations tour the vertebrate paleontology collections annually. Individuals, often those who have made fossil discoveries on their own property, turn to the Division for information on vertebrate paleontology and are welcome to visit the collection area; approximately 500 such contacts are received annually. An "open house" event is offered yearly, and typically draws 500-700 people from the local community.

Through the Friends of the Museum, the Division leads field trips and field courses in vertebrate paleontology. The Division's curators participate as speakers in lecture series and teacher workshops; the entire staff is available for public speaking events in schools, libraries, and other venues. With the Homestead Girl Scout Council and the University's Geoscience Department, the Division has hosted 2-week residential programs for senior scouts interested in pursuing careers in paleontology and the geosciences. Additionally, the Division has been featured in two Nova documentaries ("Mysteries in the Dust"; "Curse of T. Rex"), and has served as consultants for several other television ventures.

UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE EDUCATION
The Division's curators are tenured faculty affiliated with the university's Geoscience Department, and provide course instruction for the department. Offerings range from several introductory courses for non-majors to advanced courses for undergraduate and graduate geology students. Students may obtain Masters or PhD degrees in geosciences, with a vertebrate paleontology emphasis, because of the collection resources, long-established endowments, and research opportunities available through the Division. Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from other universities within the United States and abroad utilize the collections for extended periods. The faculty curators of the Division have both received the Coffman Award for excellence in research and teaching in the Department of Geosciences.

ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
By the mid 19^th century, it was apparent that the fossil record of the central High Plains would be extraordinarily important in evaluating the Cenozoic mammalian faunal succession worldwide. This is due not only to the relative "completeness" of the High Plains geologic record, covering the last 40 million years of Earth history, but (in Nebraska particularly) due to the frequent occurrence of well-preserved, mass-death assemblages. Research within the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology has therefore focused upon this unique resource, and is directed towards the evolutionary history of Neogene mammals; depositional environments and taphonomy; and the Cenozoic stratigraphy of the High Plains. Research results are published in professional journals, at professional conferences, in theses and dissertations, and in other formats (a list of recent publications may be found at the Museum's website (www.museum.unl.edu.... under "6-year Report"). Research from the Division, or based upon its collection, has resulted in approximately 450 publications since 1970.

HIGHWAY SALVAGE PROGRAM
In the 1960s, recognizing the importance of Nebraska's fossil resources both to the state and to the scientific community, the Nebraska State legislature mandated the collection and conservation of fossils imperiled by highway construction projects, and thereby established the nation's first Highway Salvage Paleontology Program. The program's success reflects a strong alliance that has been forged between the Department of Roads, its contractors, and the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology at UNSM. The Division serves as a repository for collected specimens, provides offices for Highway Salvage staff, and provides other support services as needed. Large-scale highway projects in western Nebraska have recently brought the program to public attention, as major fossil localities have been uncovered and excavated with the help of contractors and staff from the Department of Roads. Thus the program provides yet another "bridge" between the research division and the general public, and its staff is very active in outreach to local communities. Close to 25% of the Division's curated collections are derived from highway salvage projects.

PREPARATION LABORATORY
The Vertebrate Paleontology Preparation Laboratory is widely recognized as one of the top facilities of its kind in the United States. It is an active partner in both the research and educational programs of the Division and the Museum, applying modern field and laboratory techniques and conservation principles to the preparation, conservation and display of vertebrate fossils. While keeping up with current research projects, preparation staff continue to process a backlog of unprepared material collected in the 1930s by WPA crews. Several thousand unopened field jackets containing untold scientific treasures remain to be prepared.

Over 2000 molds and casts of important specimens from the Museum's collections have been produced and shared with museums and researchers around the world. In addition to its research activities, Division staff have collected, prepared and mounted virtually every fossil displayed in the Museum's exhibition halls, and are an essential element in the continued preservation and conservation of both the collections and the exhibits.

THE COLLECTION
The Division's collection of vertebrate fossils is the foundation upon which all of the aforementioned programs have been built. The collection consists of well over one million numbered specimens and their associated field data, ranked fifth nationally by the National Science Foundation. Approximately 85,000 specimens have been cataloged systematically, of which 152 are primary types and several thousand others are figured and/or described. Late Eocene through Pleistocene mammals from Nebraska and adjacent states comprise much of the collection, but holdings of Paleozoic fishes, Mesozoic marine reptiles, and Cenozoic lower vertebrates are also significant. Casts and original specimens from major Cenozoic fossil locales in North America and Europe heighten the research value of this collection, arguably the largest university collection in the United States. The collection also serves as a federally designated repository for vertebrate fossils collected on federal lands.

In 1871, before the departments of the University of Nebraska had even been established or classes taught, the first meeting of the University's Board of Regents allocated 4% of their budget to the establishment of a natural history "cabinet", a museum to preserve fossil specimens. Responsible concern and avid interest in Nebraska's primary scientific resource was thus evidenced from the first days of the University.