BMNSM Collection

Much of what we know about the natural world we owe to museum collections. Natural history collections are “libraries” of the natural world and, as such, are vital to our understanding of nature and our planet. Those scientific collections provide the biodiversity data that allows researchers to describe changes in the kinds of species living in a given area through time, documenting threats and extinctions. The National Shell Museum collection consists of a combination of gifts of private and institutional mollusk collections, including marine, freshwater, and land species, with a strong emphasis on Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. In early 2017, with support from two grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we completed cataloguing the entire collection which is also available online. Today the collection numbers over 550,000 specimens in about 135,000 lots. A lot is a group of shells collected at the same time in the same place.

Your tax-deductible contribution to the National Shell Museum's Collection will be used to help defray the costs of acquisition of archival materials such as boxes, glassware, trays, preservation liquids, specialized tools, and other materials.