Illinois State Museum

Description

Botany collection: More than 111,000 botanical specimens are housed in the herbarium. This is one of three primary collections of Illinois flora in the state. The internationally significant Cutler-Blake ethnobotanical collection preserves remains of prehistoric cultivated plants that represent much of the primary evidence for early American Indian plant domestication in North America. The zoology collections contain over 140,000 specimens representing mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and mollusks. The museum’s collections of vertebrate skeletons and fresh water mollusks are among the most extensive of their type in the U.S. They include large series for many Midwestern species and constitute one of the best comparative collections in the country for the identification of animal remains from archaeological, paleontological, and contemporary forensic contexts.

Contacts

Illinois State Museum
ISM Research & Collections Center, 1011 East Ash Street
Springfield
62703
Illiois
US