Collections

Who is looking after the collections while the Museum is in lockdown?

It was once widely believed that ammonites were coiled snakes turned magically to stone.

Discover how we're helping some of the most threatened animals on Earth.

Extraordinary notebooks from the Terra Nova Antarctic expedition are available for study for the first time.

For over 100 years palaeontologists thought this dinosaur didn't exist.

The Museum has over 23 million specimens stored in alcohol in the spirit collection. Explore some of the must-see specimens.

Samples collected on the HMS Challenger are teaching us about climate change. 

Adventuring unchaperoned in seventeenth century Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian blazed a trail for women and science.

Did you know that there are more species of fly in the UK than there are mammals on the planet? And they perform some pretty important jobs.

The footprints were made when an ancient amphibian walked across a river delta. 

Explore an interactive story about Museum experts' adventure to Wyoming, USA, when they went off-grid in search of Jurassic dinosaurs.

A new partnership between the Museum and  Farrow & Ball brings the colours of nature from the page to your home.

Female specimens are under represented in collections.

This charismatic Polynesian turned Cook's first voyage into his own ceremonial tour.

Museum scientists have dissected a spectacled porpoise specimen to discover more about these little known animals.

The beetles were collected more than 150 years ago.

The frogs have been in the Museum collection since 1852.

Blast off on an adventure around the galleries that are out of this world.  

Discover what happened to a rare bat that found itself in a high street shop.

Be brave just like Matilda and go on an adventure around the galleries.

Discover the story of the 11-tonne fossil that's been welcoming visitors to the Museum since 1887.

A year after the devastating blaze in Rio de Janeiro, hope lives on.

A usually inaccessible dinosaur will be available to researchers around the world.

Find out why our conservators worked on Britain's most famous panda.

Explore a menagerie of designs fit for a 'cathedral to nature'.

The Museum cares for the only piece of Apollo 17 Moon rock gifted to the UK, but our connection with NASA's missions goes back to Apollo 11.

How these institutions now engage with their history is crucial in how they move forward.

Discover more about some iconic Neanderthal skulls.

Meet eighteenth-century naturalist and collector Sir Joseph Banks.

Get to know the Museum scientists working on the latest dinosaur discoveries.

Follow our simple instructions to prepare pressed flowers for craft projects or create your own plant herbarium.

The face of modern science is young, black, female and ambitious.

Discover the important contributions made by one of London's first woman geologists.

A royal lion skull, a Moon rock, a famous gorilla, even Darwin's pigeons: uncover some of the most extraordinary specimens in our collection.

Go behind the scenes at the Museum and discover the huge variety of beetles and parasites in the collection. 

Natural selection is one of the core processes of evolution - but how does it work and will it ever end? 

Driven to extinction in the 1950s, very little is know about this species. 

Nopcsa was ahead of his time, publishing many creative scientific theories on dinosaurs and other reptiles. He was also a spy and a would-be king.

This month on #NHM_Live we're putting animal dating strategies to the test.

A statue of the Victorian sex symbol was displayed at the Museum.

A new paper is shedding light on the relationship between a bird's diet and how it looks.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visited the Museum to watch a performance of The Wider Earth.

The first specimen of Mylodon darwinii, a ground sloth found by Charles Darwin in 1832, is now available online.

Take a closer look at nine highlights, including Darwin's favourite octopus and a rare first edition of his book, On the Origin of Species. 

A display showcasing Queen Alexandra birdwing butterfly specimens is open at the Museum at Tring.

Meet some faces that only an ichthyologist could love and catch up on the latest natural history news.

A volume of historical bird illustrations has joined the Museum collections.

Hans Sloane's collection formed the basis of the Natural History Museum.

Although spinosaurs were named in 1915, little was known about these giants until a 31-centimetre-long claw was discovered in the UK in 1983.

Find out what can happen when fieldwork doesn't go exactly as planned, and how to do a simple DIY science project at home.

A campaign group have attracted national attention for their quest to get her permanently commemorated. 

Unusually for a modern mammal, we know little of it from a true natural history perspective.

This long-necked skeleton is Attenborosaurus, an extinct marine reptile named after legendary broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

Half of the skull was lost for over a century. 

Darwin collected fossils of these ancient giant sloths when he visited South America. 

Museum experts catch us up on some of the latest natural history news.

Discover how sparkling roadside rocks paved the way for everything we know about Iguanodon.

During the Second World War a number of galleries were commandeered by British spy networks. Explore the secret wartime history of the Museum, in photographs.

Though visitors can spot his namesake on the iconic gilded ceiling of the Museum's Hintze Hall, few will have heard of Graman Kwasimukambe.

Explore research into how the Museum's history and collections are connected to the transatlantic slave trade.

Evidence suggests she may have given birth the year before she died. 

Discover John James Audubon's iconic and valuable book The Birds of America.

When an unusual rock fell to Earth in 1795, it prompted the first large-scale investigation into the origin of meteorites.

A handy FAQ about meteorites, meteors and other small celestial bodies that Earth encounters in its travels around the Sun. 

Meet the Swedish botanist who ventured around the world on Captain Cook's pivotal first voyage.

Discover rarely displayed illustrations and specimens from Captain Cook's first voyage.

Royal Mail has just launched Captain Cook stamps starring the Museum's collections.

To help us tell fact from science fiction, scientists and engineers involved in the ExoMars 2020 program discuss the latest on the search for life on Mars.

This mesmerising light display may be the closest you can get to experiencing the phenomenon of deep-sea bioluminescence for yourself.

Explore some of nature's most extreme sensory adaptations with leading scientists from the Museum.

Watch for an exclusive peek behind the scenes at the Museum's Tank Room. 

Thousands of ocean animal specimens have joined the Museum's collections, including a group of rare anglerfish.

The Museum is scanning its collection of whale specimens so that the data is easier to handle and accessible to researchers around the world.

Watch a virtual Stegosaurus walk around as Sir David Attenborough explains how this dinosaur would have moved.

Marine mammal expert Richard Sabin takes us through what scientists know - and don't know - about narwhals, also known as unicorns of the sea.

The DNA of thousands of animals, including endangered species, is being collected in a national network of freezers.

A Brazilian beetle in the genus Metallactus has been named after an ale.

Meet the beetles that were unexpectedly found in Cambridgeshire, despite having been extinct in Britain for thousands of years.

The Museum's spectacled porpoise specimen went on a rather unusual trip, all in the name of science.

Before the Earth and Moon, there was a proto-Earth and Theia. Museum planetary science researcher Prof Sara Russell explains the origins of Earth's closest companion.

Cleaning over 300 specimens takes time and a lot of dexterity.

No bigger than a smartphone, this remarkable rock has layers that tell the story of the working lives and hardships of miners in the 1800s.

This large extinct mammal proved a puzzle for Charles Darwin when he first came across it.

In the 1830s, Darwin made a series of discoveries in South America: the mysterious remains of extinct mammals.

This discovery will allow scientists to look at the effects of climate change on blue-green algae and their toxins in Antarctica. 

The adventures of a tenacious female explorer brought to life by comic artist Sammy Borras.

Researchers have been studying the magnetic fields of 4.6-billion-year-old meteorites. 

There are more than a million eggs in the Museum's collection.

The arrival of a tiny moth in the Wildlife Garden sparked a scientific search of London.

Museum archivist Laura Brown offers a peek behind-the-scenes at the Museum from 1912 to 1914, when suffragists were fighting for the vote.

Malaysian dragonflies, beetles, grasshoppers and crickets are being digitised for research.

The Museum's blue whale died 120 years ago, but the legend of its dramatic demise lives on in the minds of one family.

Watch Dr Ronald Jenner explore the venomous puzzle that the platypus poses.

Meet the first person to illustrate a book with photographic images.

Mary was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector. Her lifetime was a constellation of firsts.

Fossil poo may not be a glamorous fossil find, but it can reveal a lot about prehistoric animals.

Whether liaising with cannibals or escaping giant spider webs, Cheesman took the challenges of perilous fieldwork - and patriarchal views - in her stride.

Brachiopod curator Zoë Hughes celebrates the life and work of one of the Museum's great pioneering geologists.

Virtual reality is providing unprecedented access to the Museum's most precious specimens.

Women working with Museum collections share what they love about their jobs, and their advice for budding curators.