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Museum explorers travel to ocean depths, the peaks of the Andes, Africa's Rift Valley, the rainforests of South America, and the deserts of Central Asia. Perhaps even to a field site or research institution in your own state, territory or country. In each area, researchers collect specimens: fossils, minerals, and rocks, plants and animals, tools and artworks. Collections care professionals have meticulously preserved, labeled, cataloged, and organized items of this kind for more than 150 years. Taken together, the NMNH collections form the largest, most comprehensive natural history collection in the world. By comparing items gathered in different eras and regions, scientists learn how our world has varied across time and space.
The Museum is committed to open access and open science, and has launched the Data Portal to make its research and collections datasets available online. It allows anyone to explore, download and reuse the data for their own research. Our natural history collection is one of the most important in the world, documenting 4.5 billion years of life, the Earth and the solar system. Almost all animal, plant, mineral and fossil groups are represented. These datasets will increase exponentially. Under the Museum's ambitious digital collections programme we aim to have 20 million specimens digitised in the next five years.