The repository for the National Biological Collections with almost 1 million specimens in the collections. A Flying squid washed ashore in the 1980s, a 4000-year-old mummified Nile crocodile, the skull of a False Killer Whale Pseudorca crassidens, the fossilised head of a Crocodilian Tomistoma gaudense, found in Gozo’s rocks and the tooth of the giant white shark Carcharocles megalodon steal the show in the natural history collections as do the birds in the new habitats hall.
Housed in a stellar location in an 18th-century palace within the fortified city of Mdina, the National Museum of Natural History has a long history to tell. The palace was constructed in the Parisian Baroque style by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena in 1724 and served as a temporary hospital during the 1837 cholera outbreak as a sanitorium for British troops in 1860 and a hospital of tuberculosis patients till January 1956.
On 22nd June 1973 the National Museum of Natural History was officially inaugurated and opened for public viewing. It and was entrusted with the acquisition, collection, display and conservation of natural history specimens, with special emphasis on local Flora and Fauna.
The display areas cover various topics, including local biodiversity and ecology, geology and paleontology, mineralogy, human evolution, marine fauna, skeletal structures, insects, shells, and birds. All halls and rooms are dedicated to local natural historians who contributed to the knowledge of our local flora and fauna. One of the highlights at the museum, a room dedicated to the late Joe Sultana, focuses on the ecological importance of the islands of Filfla, Fungus Rock, St. Paul’s, and Comino. The fascinating Habitats hall is dedicated to the first curator of Natural History, Giuseppe Despott offers a glimpse of typical Maltese habitats including woodland, garrigue, cliffs, valleys, and sandy shores and highlights the diversity of birds and various other faunal species occurring in these habitats.
Containing approximately 850 pieces of rocks and minerals as well as several artworks, the L. Mizzi Hall showcases a small part of Lewis Mizzi’s extensive mineral collection. The small but very impressive display of animals and plants preserved in jars attracts a lot of public attention.
The museum holds vast collections of birds, fossils, Quaternary Bones, shells, insects and many others. Specimens which serve as study material for local and foreign researchers.
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