Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo

The Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo (Norwegian: Naturhistorisk museum, NHM) is Norway's oldest and largest museum of natural history. It is situated in the neighborhood of Tøyen in Oslo, Norway.

It traces its roots to the University Botanical Garden, which was founded near Tøyen Manor in 1814. Museums for zoology, botany and geology were added approximately a hundred years later, when the university campus in central Oslo had become too small for such purposes.[1] [2] Major proponents were Waldemar Christofer Brøgger and Nordal Wille.[3] For most of the twentieth century the museums and botanical garden were organized in five different entities; these were merged on 1 August 1999. The current name dates from 2005.[2]

The Zoological Museum displaying wildlife from Norway as well as the rest of the world. The Botanical Garden contains 35,000 plants, 7,500 species and two exhibition greenhouses. The Geological Museum contain research material of more than 2 million fossils, rock specimens and minerals. A selection of specimens are on display in both the Geological Museum and the Zoological Museum. Among the attractions is the Darwinius masillae fossil "Ida", a primate from the Eocene Epoch.[4][5][6][7]

Collections

The museum's herbarium and fungarium are among the largest natural history collections in Norway. In a 2023 overview, the Natural History Museum reported that its botanical and mycological collections together held more than 1.7 million specimens, including about 1.1 million plants, 270,000 lichens and 330,000 fungi. Much of this material has been digitized and made searchable through the museum's own collections portal and through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.[8]

The Arctic has long been a major area of collecting and research for the museum. A 2023 survey of the collections recorded more than 233,000 Arctic plant, lichen and fungal specimens, with the oldest dating back more than 200 years. The holdings are circumpolar in scope, but are especially strong for northern mainland Norway and Svalbard. They also preserve material from major polar expeditions, including the second Fram expedition, the Gjøa expedition and the Maud expedition, as well as later twentieth-century collecting campaigns.[8]

The museum also holds a large body of nomenclatural type material from Arctic regions and maintains a DNA bank for botanical and mycological research. According to the same survey, the Arctic collections included 984 identified type collections, while the DNA bank held 22,879 Arctic accessions of plants, lichens and fungi. These collections support taxonomic, biogeographical and conservation research, and have become increasingly useful as historical records of Arctic biodiversity during a period of rapid environmental change.[8]

  • Office entrance to Zoological Museum
  • Display at Zoological Museum
  • Ceiling at the Geological Museum, Oslo.
  • Display at Zoology Museum
  • Entrance to Geological Museum

References

  1. ^ "Tøyen hovedgård". Naturhistorisk museum. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  2. ^ a b "Botanisk museum" (in Norwegian). Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  3. ^ "Botanisk museum" (in Norwegian). Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  4. ^ "Zoologisk museum - Robert Colletts hus". Naturhistorisk museum. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  5. ^ "Botanisk museum - Lids hus". Naturhistorisk museum. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  6. ^ "Geologisk museum) - Waldemar C. Brøggers hus". Naturhistorisk museum. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  7. ^ Ida – The Oldest Complete Primate Skeleton In The World (University of Oslo Natural History Museum)
  8. ^ a b c Bjorå, Charlotte Sletten; Bendiksby, Mika; Løfall, Bjørn Petter; Johannesen, Lars Erik; Timdal, Einar (2023). "Collections of Arctic Plants, Lichens, and Fungi in the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway". Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals. 19 (3): 293–309. doi:10.1177/15501906231171737. hdl:10852/108030.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Naturhistorisk Museum, Oslo.

59°55′11″N 10°46′18″E / 59.9198°N 10.7717°E / 59.9198; 10.7717

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.