Museum der Natur Hamburg – Geologie-Paläontologie

The Museum der Natur Hamburg brings together the fascinating worlds of animals (zoology), minerals (mineralogy) and fossils (geology and palaeontology) across three locations.
The research carried out by the Museum der Natur Hamburg’s Geology and Palaeontology department focuses on ecosystem and climate development over the past 50 million years or so.
Micropalaeontological and palynological studies play a key role in this, using the analysis of microorganisms and pollen grains
to reconstruct changes in ecosystems and climate.
The museum’s collections include, amongst other things, fossils from glacial till and regional fossil deposits; furthermore, the museum possesses a
comprehensive collection of fossil cephalopods.
The amber collection plays a special role in research at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB); it comprises primarily amber specimens containing
insects, other arthropods and plant remains. With the help of Baltic amber, for example, the biodiversity of the so-called ‘Amber Forest’ – an ecosystem that existed 50 million years ago in north-eastern Europe – can be studied in detail. Furthermore, the amber inclusions provide important insights into the evolution of various animal groups. In recent years, the museum has, for example, gained important insights into the evolution and biodiversity of arachnids and grasshoppers.