Collections

The nine research collections in the Zoological Museum house more than ten million scientific objects. Together they form one of the most significant natural history museum collections in Germany. Founded in 1843 as the Hamburg Museum of Natural History, the Museum was later renamed the State Institute of Zoology and then the Zoological Museum Hamburg (ZMH) before it was finally incorporated into Universität Hamburg in 1969. [ more ]

The Mineralogical Museum’s collection comprises around 90,000 objects, making it one of the largest of its kind in Germany. It also previously belonged to the Hamburg Museum of Natural History. The Museum’s extensive stock of reference collections forms the basis for training and research in the earth sciences at Universität Hamburg. Its collection of meteorites—some 943 specimens from outer space, including several from the Moon and Mars .... [ more ]

The geological-paleontological collection originally belonged to the Hamburg Museum of Natural History and comprises around 100,000 objects. Some of these are of great regional significance, for example, the seventy-million-year-old fossils from the Lägerdorf chalk pit in Schleswig-Holstein and the archive for glacial erratics. The amber specimens and the extensive collection of fossilized cephalopods enjoy particular renown. [ more ]