09 December 2018

9. University of Nebraska State Museum


Location: Lincoln, Nebraska
Website: http://museum.unl.edu/
The Collections: One of the perks of working in Iowa was easy access to the University of Nebraska State Museum. If you're interested in Cenozoic mammals, Nebraska is a veritable gold mine. I've spent an especially long time working with carnivore specimens in the museum, of which there are a great many, but it's equally strong for hoofed mammals and proboscideans - elephant relatives - of which it has the world's largest collection.
The Exhibits: For those outside the paleontological world, the richness of the Nebraska fossil record on display at Morrill Hall may come as a surprise. Particularly surprising for many is "Elephant Hall," with its skeletal parade of mammoths and mastodons. Adjoining rooms and hallways are packed with horses, rhinos, camels, and beavers (both of the burrowing and giant varieties). Also well worth the visit is the room full of Cretaceous marine fossils, which not only shows off another strength of Nebraska's fossil record, but makes really creative use of space as well. I'm also a big fan of the Jurassic dinosaurs upstairs and the zoology displays highlighting Great Plains ecosystems in the basement. If you have time to travel a bit further afield, the museum also administers Ashfall Fossil Beds in northeast Nebraska, a unique moment in time from the Miocene captured by ash from a distant volcanic eruption.

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