June 14, 1871 — Museum established by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Its first home is University Hall.
1881 — First vertebrate fossil is cataloged into the museum's scientific collections. It is a Cretaceous fish vertebra collected in Dixon County.
1922 — The museum's renowned fossil mammoth, “Archie,” is discovered on a family farm in Lincoln County.
1927 — Morrill Hall opens.
1939 — Institution name officially changed to University of Nebraska State Museum.
1941 — Board of Regents and NU chancellor reorganize museum and expand it to include four research divisions: anthropology, geology, paleontology and zoology.
1945 — Plans announced for construction of ‘‘Hall of Nebraska Wildlife'' to include 16 dioramas. The last three completed in September 1961.
1958 — Mueller Planetarium opens.
1960 — The Nebraska Highway Paleontology program, the first of its kind in the country, established to salvage and preserve fossils discovered during road construction projects.
1968 — The museum remodels and refurbishes west fourth and fifth floors of Nebraska Hall.
1971 — Museum paleontologist Mike Voorhies first discovers a rhino fossil at Ashfall.
1989 — The first three floors of Morrill Hall are renovated.
1991 — Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park opens.
1999 — The U.S. National Collection of scarab beetles from the Smithsonian Institution is transferred to the museum for off-site enhancement.
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