Collections

The grand total of the zoological collections is in the order of +37,000,000 specimens including around 100,000 types plus a frozen tissue collection of vertebrates and invertebrates.

The collections in the Department of Invertebrates comprise about 10 million specimens, preserved in alcohol, dried, or on microscopical slides, covering all major invertebrate groups, such as Mollusca, Crustacea, Echinodermata, Nematoda, Cnidaria, Porifera, Bryozoa, ... Ph. Dautzenberg collection : 4,5 million specimens of molluscs and an impressive specialised library. Together with the general mollusc collection, the RBINS holds about 8 to 9 million specimens and 45,000 species of molluscs. G. Gilson collection : Belgian marine invertebrates collected at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

The Vertebrate collections include 22,363 lots of fishes, 13,080 of amphibians, 15,681 of reptiles, 72,147 of birds and 34,545 of mammals. Most of these animals come from Belgium, Central Africa and South America. There is also a large collection of lizards from Papua New Guinea.

The Entomology collections harbour about 12 million specimens. The collections contain large series of type material especially of the Staphylinidae (types of 13,000 species), Cerambycidae, Curculionidae, Buprestidae, Chironomidae, the dragon flies of Selys Longchamps and many others. Important recent material has been collected in Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia. Samples of canopy fogging of 118 trees of 1 km2 of primary rain forests in PNG resulted in 1,200 species of weevils. Important mite collections are those of A. Fain and J.-C. Lions.

In Palaeontology, the RBINS is the only Natural History Museum in the world to store 30 entire Iguanodon skeletons (Bernissart). Other unique or important vertebrate collections are those of the mosasaurs, marine turtles, the miocene whales from Antwerp and Devonian-Cenozoic fishes. A large collection of plant fossils from the Belgian coal measures is also present. Furthermore it harbours unique collections of fossil invertebrates (brachiopods, corals, bivalves, gastropodes, ammonites, ...) with more than 30,000 type specimens from the type areas of classical Devonian, Carboniferous, Cretaceous and Cenozoic Stages. The Micropalaeontology section holds a world-wide collection of nannoplankton, ostracodes, conodonts and various palynomorphs.

The Palaeo-anthropology section includes the famous neanderthal skeletons of Spy, and is managing the world-wide catalogue of << Hominids Remains >>. For Praehistory, the RBINS houses most of the Belgian Palaeolithic pieces of art.

The Marine ecosystems Department is managing important oceanographic databases and sophisticated mathematical models for simulation of waves, storm surges, sediment transport, phytoplancton dynamics, etc.

The Mineralogy section stores an international systematic collection of 25,000 samples illustrating the variety of natural facies and the geographical distribution of sorts (82 % of all known species). The collection of about 7,000 Belgian specimens represents an unique witness of the rich mining story of the country.

The Department of Geology has a large collection of rock samples from outcrops and boreholes at the disposal of researchers. A data base (GeoDoc) with information about the Belgian subsoil contains actually more than 150.000 observation points. The documentation centre stores about 70.000 books and periodicals and more than 11.000 maps.