Research and Collections

Our place in the universe: Life, Earth, time and space. Our mission is to conduct interdisciplinary, collection-based research with the aim to expand our understanding of the geological, biological and environmental processes, which have shaped our planet and the life on it today.

The national natural history collections are the essential core of the museum. Collected over four centuries, the 14 million objects include skins and hides, skeletons, animals in jars with alcohol, insects on pins, plants on herbarium sheets, fossils, minerals, meteorites and more from all over the world. Additionally, the living collections of the Botanical Garden consists of around 10,000 plant species such as orchids, cacti, carnivorous plants and exotic trees. The collections are not open to the public.

The Natural History Museum Denmark houses one of the world's oldest collections, with 14 million objects from around the globe, collected over 400 years. The museum's many items and specimens constitute the majority of Denmark's natural history heritage. We are continuously working on digitization, and you can explore hundreds of thousands of items on our collections portal, which showcases the world's biodiversity.