Home / Institutions & Organisations / Palaeontology Collections (including Palaeobotanical Specimens)

! First of all:

Brent H. Breithaupt, University of Wyoming Laramie:
An Introduction,from Tapping Educational Resources.
See especially: Museums: The Underutilized Resource.

Deutscher Museumsbund e.V.:
Naturwissenschaftliche Museen (in German).
The Group for Natural History Museums represents the specific interests of Natural History Museums and museums with collections on nature in the German Museums Association.

Deutscher Museumsbund e.V.:
Naturwissenschaftliche Museen (in German).
The Group for Natural History Museums represents the specific interests of Natural History Museums and museums with collections on nature in the German Museums Association. Note especially:
! Natural Science Museums in Germany with their own website (in German).

Cornelia Weber, Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrums für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (sponsored by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft): Datenbank Universitätsmuseen und -sammlungen in Deutschland (in German). Go to:
Palaeontology. Palaeontology collections in German universities.

! Webmuseen.de: Natural History Museums in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (in German).

New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque, New Mexico, See also:
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Web-based Paleo-database Home Page.

Tony Barnosky, Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkely: Paleontology Database Network. A link directory for promoting communication about electronic databases in palaeontology. See also here.

Pflanzensammlungen, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Switzerland (in German).

Bavarian Natural History Collections (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, SNSB).

Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), University of California, Berkeley: Paleontology Resources, and Paleontological Collection Catalogs and Related Resources.

N. Boonchai et al. (2009): Paleontological parks and museums and prominent fossil sites in Thailand and their importance in the conservation of fossils. In PDF, Carnets de Géologie.
! Note figure 3 and 4: Petrified trunks with root plates.

! The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN): CHIN is a national centre of excellence that provides a visible face to Canada's heritage through the world of networked information. Search for:
Botany.
Palynology.
Paleontology.

! Coordination Centre for Scientific University Collections in Germany (situated at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).
Their strategies are improving the visibility and availability of the collections as well as to develop and integrate the collections as decentralised infrastructures for research, teaching and education, with due regard for their diversity and specific local characteristics – on an interdisciplinary and cross-site basis.
Note especially:
! News section (in German), with current notices of events, publications, funding offers and vacancies.
Worth checking out:
! Wissenschaftliche Sammlungen. The portal lists object-based scientific collections.

D.L. Contreras (2018): A workflow and protocol describing the field to digitization process for new project-based fossil leaf collections. Open access, Applications in Plant Sciences, 6: e1025.

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, located in Colorado, USA, west of Colorado Springs

The Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Paläobotanik, Geschichte (in German). See also:
History of Botany at Senckenberg. PDF file, by S. Dressler and G.Zizka (2005).

Geoscience Museum, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany.

K.I. Grimm (2018): Die Paläontologische Sammlung am Institut für Geowissenschaften der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität. PDF file, in German. Mainzer naturwiss. Archiv, 55: 97–110.

Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), Hannover, Germany. The Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.
Search for "Sammlungen" (in German).
Wissenschaftliche Originale (in German).
Schriftenverzeichnis über die wissenschaftliche Originale in den Sammlungen BGR/LBEG, Hannover und BGR, Berlin (PDF file, in German.
Recherchemöglichkeiten, vorwiegend Wissenschaftliche Originale (in German). Worth checking out:
Das Sammlungsobjekt des Monats (in German).

M. Harzhauser et al. (2023): „aus einem Trümmerhaufen des ausgebombten Hauses Wien III“ – one century provenance context of the geological-paleontological collections in the Natural History Museum Vienna (1919 to 2019). In PDF, Ann. Naturhist. Mus. Wien, Serie A, 124: 101–124.
See here as well.

! C. Haug et al. (2020): Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding �"Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil.based scientific data": the importance of private collections. Open access, PalZ.

N. Hauschke and D. Mertmann (2016): Ausgewählte Fossilfunde aus den Geologisch-Paläontologischen Sammlungen der Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle (Saale): Deutschland. PDF file, in German. Der Aufschluss, 67.

E.J. Hilton et al. (2021): The Expanding Role of Natural History Collections. Open access, Ichthyology & Herpetology, 109: 379-391.
! "... Collections, and their vitality, depend on both their continued roles in traditionally supported fields (e.g., taxonomy) as well as emerging arenas {...]
a natural history collection that does not continue to grow by adding new specimens ultimately will limit its utility. ..."

J.K. Hinz and I. Werneburg (2019): The historical archive of the Palaeontological Collection Of Tübingen, Germany. Palaeontologia Electronica. See also here (in PDF).

M.P.H. Howe (2023): The UK National Geological Repository: a case study in innovation. Free access, Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

The Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, Scotland: Search the Hunterian Museum Geology INCA Database. 12,000 geological specimens searchable from the database online. You can also search the HUG database (mostly uncatalogued material).

Icon (The Institute of Conservation).
Icon raises awareness of the cultural, social and economic value of caring for heritage and champions high standards of conservation. Please take notoice:
So you want to be a conservator? 10 traits you need to succeed.

! iDigBio. The Integrated Digitized Biocollections, the National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) funded by the National Science Foundation. Through ADBC, data and images for millions of biological specimens are being made available in electronic format for the research community. Go to:
! iDigBio Portal: iDigBio serves as the coordinating center for the national digitization effort; fosters partnerships and innovations; facilitates the determination and dissemination of digitization practices and workflows. Worth to check out: Digitization Resources.
! See especially: Search records.

D.M. Jarzen, Florida Museum of Natural History: Paleobotany Collection Policies.
This expired link is now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

International Palaeontologial Association (I.P.A.): Directory of Fossil Collections of the World. This website provides data from museums, academic institutions and departments, curators, and other collection managers in order to create an indexed, searchable on-line database listing information about fossil collections around the world.

! K.R. Johnson et al. (2023): A global approach for natural history museum collections. In PDF, Science, 379.
See also here.
"... The collections that natural history museums acquired over the past three centuries carry data that cannot be replicated but can be used as baselines for efforts to regenerate ecosystems and revitalize communities. ..."

K.G. Johnson et al. (2011): Climate Change and Biosphere Response: Unlocking the Collections Vault. In PDF, BioScience, 61: 147-153. This expired link is available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! Kenneth G. Johnson (Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, London), Harry F. Filkorn, and Mary Stecheson: Paleontology Collections on the World Wide Web: The Missing Link. Palaeontologia Electronica Vol. 8 (2); October 2005.

W. Jung and E. Knobloch (1972): Die “Sternberg-Originale” der Bayerischen Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie zu München. PDF file, in German. Mitt. Bayer. Staatssamml. Paläont. hist. Geol., 12: 105-111.

! W. Jung (1970): Die Gothan'sche Rhät/Lias-Sammlung der Naturhistorischen Gesellschaft Nürnberg. PDF file, in German. Natur und Mensch, Naturhistorischen Gesellschaft Nürnberg e.V.

J. Kovar-Eder (2014): Deutschlands naturkundliche Sammlungen - Ausgangslage und Relevanz der Sammlungen als Forschungsinfrastruktur (in German). PDF file, go to PDF page 10. Mitteilungen und Berichte aus dem Institut für Museumsforschung, 52.

! J. Kvacek et al. (2021): Catalogue of Plant Fossils Described in Works by Kaspar M. Sternberg Second Revised Edition. In PDF, Sternbergiana, 1: 1–309.
"... In summary, the second edition of the Catalogue comprises specimens that are types of 82 genera, 3 subgenera, 535 species and 14 varieties described by Kaspar Maria Count Sternberg and his collaborators: K. B. Presl and A. C. J. Corda. The type material of 32 genera, 233 species and 5 varieties is housed in the National Museum, Prague. The types of 79 species and 4 varieties have been located in other European museums. ..."

Rex Bing Hung Kwok, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales: Palaeontology. Go to: Palaeontological Collections in Museums, and Exhibits of Private Palaeontological Collections.

Leeds Geoblitz Project. A review of the geology collection at Leeds Museum, England, UK. Go to:
The Palaeobotany Review.
"The aim of the review is to establish material that is of scientific merit and specimens which are good representatives, possessing public potential for display and community events. These two criteria do not necessarily go hand in hand; as a specimen may have a fantastic scientific research potential, but may not be visually impressive. Therefore the specimens are graded against two separate criteria: Scientific Merit (as a numerical value of stars) and Public Engagement (as a Gold, Silver or Bronze status)".

B.S. Lieberman and J. Kimmig (2018): Museums, paleontology, and a biodiversity science–based approach. In PDF, The Geological Society of America Special Paper, 535. See also here.
"... it is clearly apparent that research involving fossil museum collections data is undergoing a renaissance, and new digital approaches are making it possible to consider longstanding questions of relevance to evolutionary biology ..."

! F. Löcse et al. (2021): Paläobotanische Kostbarkeiten aus den Versteinerten Wäldern von Nová Paka (Tschechien) und Chemnitz (Deutschland)&xnbsp;– Originale zu Stenzel (1889, 1906) und Rudolph (1906) in der paläobotanischen Sammlung der Geologischen Bundesanstalt in Wien. PDF file, in German. Jb. Geol. B.-A., 159: 289–313. See also here.
About old findings of Psaronius tree ferns and Medullosa seed ferns: Ankyropteris brongniartii, Asterochlaena laxa, Asterochlaena ramosa.

! F. Löcse and R. Rößler (2018): Paul Geipel's palaeobotanical collection–one of the largest and most important former private collections of the Petrified Forest of Chemnitz. PDF file, in German. Veröff. Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz, 41: 5-54.
See likewise here.

Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London: The Former British Petroleum Microfossil Collection (in 1991 BP donated to the Natural History Museum London). The database, a record of BP’s exploration activity since the 1950s, hold details of material from over 3,500 individual well runs. The collection includes micropalaeontological assemblage slides and residues; palynological slides and residues and nannofossil slides from wells and outcrop from over 120 countries world-wide.

A.M.G. López (2019): On taphonomy: collages and collections at the Geiseltalmuseum. Free access, BJHS: Themes 4: 195–214.

C.R. Marshall et al. (2018): Quantifying the dark data in museum fossil collections as palaeontology undergoes a second digital revolution. Free access, Biology letters, 14: 20180431.http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.04.
"... the published literature represents only a small proportion of the palaeontological data housed in museum collections
[...] in the early phases of a second digital revolution in palaeontology—the digitization of museum collections—we provide an estimate of the magnitude of palaeontology’s dark data ..."

S. McLoughlin (2022; start on PDF-page 13): Palaeobotanical collections and facilities at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
In PDF, 11^th European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference Abstracts, Program and Proceedings. See also here.

The National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Department of the Interior (the Museum Management Program (MMP), part of the National Center for Cultural Resources Stewardship):
! NPS Museum Handbook. This is a reference guide on how to manage, preserve, document, access and use museum collections. Go to:
Part I: Museum Collections.
Part II, Museum Records.
Part III, Museum Collections Use.
All files are in PDF format. See especially:
! Appendix U: Curatorial Care of Paleontological and Geological Collections (in PDF).
Appendix K: Photography (in PDF).

Natural Science Collections Alliance. The Natural Science Collections Alliance is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit association that supports natural science collections, their human resources, the institutions that house them, and their research activities for the benefit of science and society.

American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY: Division of Paleontology, Frontdoor. Search the largest fossil collection in the World (taxonomically, geocronologically, geographically, or stratigraphically). No fossil plants online up to now.

OeTyp-[sic!]Catalogue of Palaeontological Types in Austrian Collections (a project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Commission for the Palaeontological and Stratigraphical Research of Austria) and the Natural History Museum Vienna.
A database showing published palaeontological types, figured specimens and reference material in Austrian collections.

D.R. Oldroyd (ed.), 2002: The Earth Inside and Out: Some Major Contributions to Geology in the Twentieth Century. In PDF, Geological Society Special Publication 192.
Table of contents on PDF page 6. See especially:
! PDF page 336, S.J. Knell: Collecting, conservation and conservatism: late twentieth century developments in the culture of British geology.

A. Palandacic et al. (2024): An annotated catalogue of selected historical type specimens, including genetic data, housed in the Natural History Museum Vienna. Free access, ZooKeys, 1203: 253–323.

The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), Ithaca, New York.
PRI, affiliated with Cornell University, pursues and integrates education and research. PRI houses one of the largest fossil collections in North America.
See also here.

The Palaeontology Newsletter (issued by the Palaeontological Association).
The Palaeontology Newsletter contains a mixture of palaeontological news, book reviews, reviews of past meetings, details of forthcoming meetings as well as a series of regular discussion features. Copies of the Newsletter from Issue 27 onward are available online.
You may navigate from the Newsletter Archive.

! The Paleobiology Database (PBDB).
PBDB is a public database of paleontological data that anyone can use, maintained by an international non-governmental group of paleontologists. The Paleobiology Database has been supported by many grants over the years, mostly from the National Science Foundation. You may navigate from the
Paleobiology Database Guest Menu or check out the
Frequently Asked Questions. Please also note the detailed and excellent tutorial:
! M.D. Uhen et al. (2023): Paleobiology Database User Guide Version 1.0 Free access, PaleoBios, 40: 1-56. See also here (in PDF).

! The Paleobiolgy Database (original working group funded by NCEAS, web page maintained by John Alroy, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, CA). The Paleobiology Database purpose is to provide global, collection-based occurrence and taxonomic data for marine and terrestrial animals and plants of any geological age, as well as web-based software for statistical analysis of the data. You may search by the generalized table of spatiotemporal coverage, or by a list of major individual data sets that have been reposited in the database.

S.E. Peters and N.A. Heim (2010): The geological completeness of paleontological sampling in North America. PDF file, Paleobiology, 36: 61-79.
See also here.

R. Rößler (2014): Das Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz - eine Erfolgsgeschichte (in German). PDF file, go to PDF page 47. Mitteilungen und Berichte aus dem Institut für Museumsforschung, 52.

San Diego Natural History Museum:
Paleontology.

Department of Paleontology, San Diego Natural History Museum: Paleontology Collection Data Access.

B. Sánchez et al. (2020): The Paleontological Collection of the Facultad de Ingeniería of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In PDF, Paleontología Mexicana, 6: 1-9. See also here.

The Burke Museum, Seattle, WA, United States:
Paleobotany at the Burke Museum.

The Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt, Germany: SeSam. This database enables you to access information concerning the objects stored in the collection of the Senckenberg Museum.

SESAR, the Solid Earth SAmple Registry (an NSF funded project, by geosamples.org): SESAR is building a web-based digital registry for solid earth samples that will provide for the first time a way to uniquely name and identify samples on a global scale by means of the International Geo Sample Number IGSN. Establishing SESAR and the IGSN will have a wide-ranging impact on sample and data management, especially with respect to sample sharing and data integration, addressing a basic requirement for interoperability among information systems for sample-based data.

O.A. Shevchuk et al. (2024): The palaeobotanical heritage of Ukraine and its endangered status following the Russian military invasion. Free access, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 331.
"... rich and scientifically important fossils of early multicellular organisms have been documented from the Ediacaran, early land plants from the Silurian–Devonian, coal-forming floras from the Carboniferous, typical postextinction recovery vegetation and coal swamp forests from the Triassic and Jurassic, and well-preserved angiosperms and conifers from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic
[...] The impact of the war on Ukrainian museums and scientific collections has implications for how fossil specimens are stored and what procedures are enacted to preserve collections in other parts of the world in the event of war, civil disturbance, or natural disasters ..."

Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History: Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems DataNet. ETE DataNet is designed to make large datasets on fossil faunas and floras from continental deposits available to the global scientific community and the public via the internet. It provides a standarized format, map searchability, query functions and downloading capabilities.

F.F. Steininger and U. Jansen, Naturmuseum und Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main: Die paläontologischen Sammlungen Deutschlands. Palaeontological collections in Germany, sorted in alphabetical order (PDF file). In German. Excellent!

SYNTHESYS.
SYNTHESYS is a European Commission - funded project, creating an integrated European infrastructure for natural history collections.
! Access:
SYNTHESYS funding is available to allow scientists based in European Member and Associated States to undertake short visits to utilize the collections, staff expertise, and analytical facilities at one of the 21 partner institutions for the purposes of their research. A core element is to provide funded researcher visits (Access) to the 390,000,000 specimens housed by SYNTHESYS institutions.
! Virtual Access:
For the first time in the SYNTHESYS programme, users will be able to request virtual access to collections. Participating institutions will digitise collections according to community demand and data will be made openly available.

V. Vajda and C.B. Skovsted (2021): Advances in Swedish palaeontology; the importance of fossils in natural history collections - The Department of Palaeobiology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. In PDF, GFF, 143: 93-10; DOI: 10.1080/11035897.2021.1968198. See also here.

! Cornelia Weber, Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Berlin:
The History of Scientific Collections (supported by the the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG).
The project intends to catalogue German universities' collections and to compile extensive data on the holdings and history of these collections, in order to form the basis of a specific investigation into the history of science and a historical analysis of collecting. Go to:
! University museums and collections in Germany.

I. Werneburg (2023): Fossile Pflanzen. Die Paläobotanische Schausammlung in Tübingen (1983 bis 2017). PDF file, in German. Chelyops, Berichte aus der Paläontologischen Sammlung in Tübingen, 2: 139-178.
! Note the depicted specimens in the photo documentation (plates) on pages 156-178 (PDF pages 18-40).

I. Werneburg (2021): Ein Stück Kulturgeschichte. Zur Entwicklung der Paläontologischen Sammlung Tübingen. PDF file, in German. In: B. Engler and E. Seidl (eds.): Aus der Tiefenzeit. Die Paläontologische Sammlung der Universität Tübingen. Schriften des Museums der Universität Tübingen MUT, 20.

I. Werneburg and M. Böhme (2018): The Palaeontologial Collection of Tübingen. In PDF. Note also here.
In L.A. Beck, U. Joger (eds.), Paleontological Collections of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Natural History Collection. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77401-5_52. Worth checking out:
Table of contents (57 chapters).

Whitby Museum, The Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, UK: SCARBOROUGH & WHITBY MUSEUMS TYPE & FIGURED FOSSILS CATALOGUE, LIST OF SPECIMENS. Scroll down to "Plantae". Images of Cheirolepis setosus, Cheirolepis setosus woolleri, Clathopteris whitbiensis, Cyclopteris beani, Flabellaria? viminea, Marzaria simpsoni, Nageiopsis anglica, Nilssonia compta, Optopteris acuminata, Otozamites, Pachypteris lanceolata, Pecopteris propinqua, Pecopteris undans, Pterophyllum comptum, Sphenopteris williamsonis, Williamsonia gigas, Williamsonia himas, Zamia gigas.

P. Wolniewicz (2009): Easily-accessible digital palaeontological databases - a new perspective for the storage of palaeontological information. Free access, Geologos, 15: 181-188.
"... In order to develop an easily accessible digital palaeontological database, three steps should be followed: (1) digitization of the studied specimens, (2) acquisition of morphometric data, and (3) contribution of the data to open and searchable geoinformatic (palaeontological) databases ..."

I. Zorn et al. (2007): Historische Kostbarkeiten der Sammlungen der Geologischen Bundesanstalt in Wien, Österreich. Historic treasures in the collections at the Geological Survey, Vienna, Austria. In PDF, GeoAlp.

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