Our collection groups
Rocks and minerals, stuffed animals and naturalised plants, fossils and living creatures, prehistoric, anthropological and ethnological objects make up the naturalist collections. A total of 68 million specimens are stored and assembled in collections, which are themselves gathered into groups. Accompanied by document, archive and art collections, these collections represent around 100 years’ worth of natural history knowledge.
The MNHN’s biological anthropology collections are among the world’s most diverse and as such they constitute a unique resource...
The biological resources of living and cryopreserved cells (RBCell) of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle store...
Botanical collections include dry collections (over 2,000,000 herbarium sections of cryptogams - various fungi, algae, bryophytes...
The MNHN’s cultural anthropology collections focus on the interrelationship between human societies and their environment with a...
The Muséum’s libraries’ collections document every stage in the natural history research cycle, from the first field notes and...
The mineralogy and geology collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle include over 4,000 meteorites, nearly 24,000...
This is one of the fastest-growing groups each year thanks to the many oceanographic campaigns. It contains a large number of...
The palaeontology collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle contains between 5 and 6 million specimens and...
The Prehistory collections focuses on archaeological remains, of mineral, animal or vegetable matter, which illustrate the...
The terrestrial arthropod collection group is made up of insects, arachnids and myriapods. The Onychophora collection is connected...
The vertebrate collections comprise around 1.4 million specimens.