Explore the Czech Republic National Museum's Natural History Collections
Discover the wonders of our natural world from home.
Try to imagine. You are 430 million years back in time near St. Jana pod Skalou and dive in the sea. You see the seabed rising and the volcanoes penetrating it. Volcanoes spewing ash into a wide area as they explode. And near this ferocious rampage, two Miraspis mira trilobites swim.
Bacteria. These caused the carapace of Ptychoparia striata was covered with iron sulfides more than half a billion years ago, which gave these fossils today a brown color. Joachim Barrand Collection.
A skeleton of Protelops geinitzi, discovered by workers in the Bílá Hora quarry in the 19th century. It is one of the best preserved specimens of Mesozoic fish in the Czech Republic.
The collection of mycologyNational Museum, Czech Republic
Mycological collections contain over 600,000 collection items of fungi and lichens. It is the largest collection in the Czech Republic and one of the largest in Europe.
The herpetology collectionNational Museum, Czech Republic
Not every museum boasts a large collection of reptile skeletons. However, dozens of turtle, lizard and snake skeletons are stored in the National Museum depositories.
The anatomical-pathological collectionNational Museum, Czech Republic
You look at skeleton of a 19-year-old man with a congenital bone fracture disease. This disease manifests itself in the mother's abdomen, when many fractures occur before delivery.
It is not easy to prepare and properly store long snake bodies in collections. In the past, large cylinders with ground-glass lids served this purpose. Today we use more accessible containers with metal and plastic closures. The lids must be well sealed because the snakes inside are in 70% alcohol.
Zoological collections also contain a significant number of specimens of complete animal skeletons, which can either be unfolded and stored in boxes or folded. Do you recognize the animals in the picture?
The collection of mammalsNational Museum, Czech Republic
"Light at the End of the Tunnel" An example of the placement of skeletons in the osteological depository of the Zoological Department.
The collections of the National Museum well reflect the diversity of the bird world. The worldwide number of bird species is estimated at up to 18,000! The smallest hummingbirds weigh only a few grams, while an ostrich can weigh up to 140 kg!
The collection of the butterfliesNational Museum, Czech Republic
Butterflies. Beautiful creatures who continue to amaze the world with their colourful varieties. Here you can see entomological boxes with cabbage butterflies, swallows and peacock butterflies.
The ornitology collectionNational Museum, Czech Republic
Balking is one of the padding methods that preserves the scientific and documentary value of specimens while allowing great cost-effectiveness in storage.
Original storage of specimens in the collection of Franz Anton Nickerl (1813–1871), which became the basis of the entomological collection of the National Museum at the beginning of the 20th century.
Guarded area where an ordinary person never gets. Interior of the paleontological depositories in Horní Počernice. Spaces that only curators administer collections can access.
Beautiful nooks in the palobotany depository. The large fossil to the left of the cabinet belongs to the Tertiary palm tree. On the right there is a box reminiscent of the father of the founder of the National Museum, Kaspar Count of Sternberg.
The collection of the beatlesNational Museum, Czech Republic
Atypically arranged species of beetles representing a varied mixture of families occurring in the Czech Republic.
We will never really know whether the writer Karel Čapek accidentally sought inspiration for his work The War with the Newts in the National Museum. However, we have newts and these Japanese and Chinese are up to 150 cm in size.
In our anthropological collection there are 3000 skeletal anatomical-pathological preparations. They are an indispensable tool for anthropologists in the diagnosis of similar findings at historical burial sites.
At present the ostrich is the largest living bird. Inability to fly can easily compensate for its speed. The ostrich can run at speeds of up to 70 km/h but not in our depositories :)
Numerous specimens of different ages and origins provide an idea of the composition and changes of our birds over the last decades to hundreds of years. The origin of some specimens goes back to the second half of the 19th century!
The paleontological collectionNational Museum, Czech Republic
Before the reconstruction of the Historical building, most of the paleontological collections were stored in wooden boxes.
Petr Jan Juračka
The photos won a silver medal on Tokyo International Foto Awards 2019 in category "Science"
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