Mobile museum, specimens and activities featured at upcoming event

LAWRENCE — The KU Natural History Museum invites the public — especially University of Kansas students — to visit its mobile museum and get a gourmet hot dog from Coney Island LFK from 3:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29, in front of the Kansas Union.

The mobile museum, Professor Dyche’s Biodiversity Emporium, features more than a dozen micro exhibits of specimens from the collections of the KU Biodiversity Institute. The exhibits are housed in the KU MoCOLAB, a repurposed 1972 Airstream trailer made available through the KU Center for Service Learning and designed by KU architecture & design and engineering students.

Inside the union, visitors can try on a reptilian tail and take a selfie at the museum’s “Can You Outrun a T. rex” activity, and they can look closely at amphibian and reptile specimens.

The first 30 people in line for Coney Island LFK will get a free hot dog, and after that, all hot dogs will be $1 off until 6:30 p.m. Coney Island LFK offers unusual toppings such as bacon jam, curry and peanut butter honey sauce.

Eleanor Gardner, the museum’s outreach & engagement coordinator, said that the event marks the first time the mobile natural history museum has been offered on campus.

“Our goal is to make the KU Natural History Museum accessible to as many people as possible, and one way to do that is to bring museum exhibits outside Dyche Hall,” she said.

The name Professor Dyche’s Biodiversity Emporium pays homage to Lewis Lindsay Dyche, a naturalist, KU professor and showman who was as famous for his expeditions and lectures as he was for creating the museum’s Panorama of North American Animals for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

The mobile museum and “Can You Outrun a  T. rex?”  were made possible in part through KU Student Senate funding for the museum.