The roots of the KU Biodiversity Institute begin with the first specimens of insects, fish, birds, mammals, plants, and reptiles collected by Professor Francis Huntington Snow in the late 1800s. These specimens formed the early collections and exhibits of the KU Natural History Museum. Over time at KU, four independent, collection-based biodiversity research entities formed: the Museum of Natural History (fossil and recent vertebrates), the Snow Entomological Museum (arthropods), the Museum of Invertebrate Paleontology (fossil invertebrates), and the McGregor Herbarium (plants). During 1994–1995, these units merged into a single Natural History Museum, with collection-based divisions of mammalogy, ornithology, herpetology, ichthyology, entomology, invertebrate zoology, botany, vertebrate paleontology and invertebrate paleontology. The Museum added biodiversity informatics in 1993, paleobotany in 1995, and in 2004 added parasitology and biodiversity modeling and policy. In 2003, the Biodiversity Institute was established to unite these and several other university units that share a common mission and administrative structure. The new name encompasses 14 research divisions, collections of more than 8 million plants and animals, and 1.5 million archaeological artifacts, as well as a research, collections and education infrastructure that spans seven buildings on the KU campus. The Biodiversity Institute also includes the Natural History Museum, a local and regional resource for natural history exhibits and informal science education programs for the public, as well as the Paleontological Institute, the global hub for production of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology and other paleontological publications. Today the KU Biodiversity Institute has greatly enhanced its research infrastructure, from new collections, facilities and housing to molecular genomics and biodiversity informatics. Funding for these enhancements has been generated by research grants, private fund-raising, university investments, and strategic allocation of resources.