Natural History Museum Aarhus

Description

The Natural History Museum Aarhus was established as an institution in 1941, but the history of the collections dates back further—at least until the mid-1800s. As the second largest natural history museum in Denmark, the museum conducts research in natural history and related sciences, maintains and expands its collections and public exhibitions, collaborates with other research institutions, universities, and elementary and secondary schools with the aim to promote knowledge of natural history research.The general research and collections foci are diversity, conservation, phenology, faunistics, systematics, biogeography, and evolution of the European fauna with special focus on Denmark and Scandinavia.The museum is located at Aarhus University campus and in addition runs a field laboratory and an education facility—the Mols Laboratory—in the Mols Bjerge National Park. The museum has a staff of about 55 full- and parttime employees in research, collection management, communication and public engagement, and administration supported by ca 100 volunteers.The museum holds extensive collections mainly of zoological specimens collected since the late 1700s. Of special interest are the entomology, mammalogy, ornithology, limnology and malacology collections.The entomological collections include dry, pinned insects. The collections hold approximately 1 million specimens with more than 90% of the specimens being from Denmark. The collections are thus one of the most important Danish collections in the world. The largest sections of the collection are the Danish Lepidoptera (more than 500,000 specimens) and the Danish Coleoptera (ca. 100,000 specimens). The most important non-European collection is a large collection of East African Orthoptera.The mammal collections include taxidermy, skin- and skeleton specimens as well as tissue samples from ca 20,000 specimens. The majority of the specimen are collected in Denmark, but some are from the museum’s East African expeditions in the 1940s and 50s.The ornithological collections include taxidermy, skin and skeleton specimen as well as eggs and nests of mainly Danish and European species as well as a few exotic species. The collection contains ca 20,000 specimens. In addition to the physical specimens, the ornithology collection contains a unique Bio Acoustics collection of ca 16,000 recordings of bird songs and calls recorded by Poul Bondesen and Poul Hansen from 1950 to 2000.The limnology (freshwater invertebrate) collection contains ca 140,000 ethanol preserved specimen of aquatic invertebrates from Denmark and ca 26,000 from adjacent countries. A very thorough sampling from Danish freshwater streams, ponds and lakes makes this collection very valuable for the understanding of aquatic ecosystems.The malacology collection contains ca 40,000 dry preserved shells of mollusks collected globally. The collection represents ca 2,500 genera and 10,000 species from terrestrial, marine and freshwater habitats. The collection contain specimen from Danish expeditions such as the Ingolf expedition in 1895-1896 and the Galathea expeditions in 1845-1847 and 1950-1952. The malacological collection was fully digitized in 2019.

Contacts

ADMINISTRATIVE_POINT_OF_CONTACT
Kent Olsen
Telephone: +45 40272030
email: kent@nathist.dk

POINT_OF_CONTACT
Hans Viborg Kristensen
Telephone: +45 40271373
email: hans@nathist.dk

Natural History Museum Aarhus
Wilhelm Meyers Allé 10
Aarhus C
8000
DK
email: nm@nathist.dk