Revisiting the expeditions and collections of
Charles D. Bunker
C. D. Bunker was an early, largely self-taught biologist in the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, bridging between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bunker, who is perhaps most famous for discovering the immense mosasaur that now adorns the entryway of the Museum, has been featured in a recent biography written by his grandson. In his work at the Museum, Bunker assembled comprehensive collections of vertebrates from across the state of Kansas.
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The current curators, collections managers, and students in the divisions of terrestrial vertebrates at the Museum are now seeking to reconstruct and replicate Bunker's early surveys, after a century of dramatic change in the state's landscapes and environments.
Bunker's Surveys
The map at left shows a suite of sites for which Bunker and his contemporaries assembled collections that were reasonably comprehensive and representative.
WORK
Beginning late in 2021, Museum biologists have been revisiting and resurveying the Bunker sites, and assess and analyze how vertebrate faunas have changed over the past century... such as at the site shown in the image at right, the site of a cabin near Lawrence where Bunker and his students and colleagues collected for many years.
Get involved
If you are interested in adding data, at least on birds, to the Bunker Resurvey Project, this page offers a compendium of resurvey sites that have publicly accessible areas where birders can go.
