Our Collections

Collections status

In general, our collections have returned to normal operations, including hosting visitors and making loans. Collections visitors may be required to comply with L.A. County, museum-wide, or department-specific protocols to ensure safety. If you are requesting a loan, depending on the current situation, you may be asked about the operational status of your home institution, the delivery of packages, and the storage of specimens in the event of a shutdown or lockdown. We hope these steps will help keep our staff, you, and our collections safe.

About our collections

We support our own and the rest of the world’s scholars by building and preserving an archive of objects, artifacts, and specimens from the natural world and human cultures, across the whole globe and from the present to billions of years ago. Our collections support current research and await future research uses no one has even thought of yet.

Sometimes we also use these objects, artifacts, and specimens in support of exhibitions and public programming, and visitors can see some of them on display, but those are not the primary purpose for the research collection. It is an ever-growing record of nature and culture for anyone to use to better understand our world.

Did you know? Coelacanth fish “walk” on their fins like land animals use their legs.

Recent Acquisitions

A jar containing about ten small, slender salamanders sits in front of a computer keyboard.

Our Herpetology collection recently acquired these salamanders in the genus Batrachoseps. These are especially important specimens as they are "paratypes," which means they were studied and published as part of the description of a species.

Photo: Neftali Camacho

Photo of workers surrounded by a meshwork of beams and conduit

This photo is one of a longer series of Los Angeles photographs donated to our History department by photograph Gary Leonard. It shows skill workers installing conduit within the reinforcing steelwork for a concrete column for the new Sixth Street Bridge in January 2016. See more photos from this series here.

Photo by Gary Leonard.

Photo of a fossil ammonite embedded in rock

This is a late Cretaceous ammonite in the family Tetragonitidae from the Tumey Hills area of Fresno Co., California. It was collected on a joint field expedition by staff from Invertebrate Paleontology, Vertebrate Paleontology, and the Dinosaur Institute to the same area where our state dinosaur, Augustynolophus, is from.

Photo by Lindsay Walker

Photo of a kit containing five different wood and metal hand tools

This tool kit used to create bonsai trees was recently donated to our History department by the Kozawa family, who owned and operated the Tokio Florist in Silver Lake for decades.

Photo by Beth Werling

This ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) was recently added to our Mammalogy collection after being salvaged as roadkill on State Route 39 near the San Gabriel Reservoir. Salvage is one important way we develop our collection of local species.

Photo by Shannen Robson

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Our Herpetology collection recently acquired these salamanders in the genus Batrachoseps. These are especially important specimens as they are "paratypes," which means they were studied and published as part of the description of a species.

Photo: Neftali Camacho

This photo is one of a longer series of Los Angeles photographs donated to our History department by photograph Gary Leonard. It shows skill workers installing conduit within the reinforcing steelwork for a concrete column for the new Sixth Street Bridge in January 2016. See more photos from this series here.

Photo by Gary Leonard.

This is a late Cretaceous ammonite in the family Tetragonitidae from the Tumey Hills area of Fresno Co., California. It was collected on a joint field expedition by staff from Invertebrate Paleontology, Vertebrate Paleontology, and the Dinosaur Institute to the same area where our state dinosaur, Augustynolophus, is from.

Photo by Lindsay Walker

This tool kit used to create bonsai trees was recently donated to our History department by the Kozawa family, who owned and operated the Tokio Florist in Silver Lake for decades.

Photo by Beth Werling

This ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) was recently added to our Mammalogy collection after being salvaged as roadkill on State Route 39 near the San Gabriel Reservoir. Salvage is one important way we develop our collection of local species.

Photo by Shannen Robson

Stories About Our Collections

Collections

Rectangular stone with Maya glyph depicting a man holding a cacao plant. Campeche, Mexico. AD 600-900.

A Virtual Chocolate-y Tour of the Collections

Explore the collections of the Natural History Museum through the lens of chocolate!

Year of the Dragon

Celebrate the 2024 Lunar New Year with highlights from the collection

Tule and Its Many Gifts

Kimberly Morales Johnson | Educator, Gabrielino Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians

amulet with natural fiber strung through

The Phillipine Lingling-o

A pre-colonial symbol of fertility and virility

collage image with Mark Langill and Dodger Bobbleheads

Fandom Springs to Life

Mark Langill | Team Historian, Los Angeles Dodgers

Extinction and Survival at La Brea Tar Pits

Groundbreaking new research from La Brea Tar Pits curators finds that in California, 13,000 years ago, huge Ice Age mammals that had roamed the landscape for many millennia, suddenly ceased to exist. The cause? Humans, catastrophic fires, and an ecosystem made vulnerable by climate change.