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The Museum holds a vast collection of rocks, minerals, meteorites and ores.
Explore 500,000 rocks, gems and minerals, including 5,000 meteorites.
Find out how you can use the mineralogy collections as a resource for economic geology and scientific research.
Looking for a specimen?
The mineralogy collection is being digitised
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Meteorites
The Museum houses one of the world's finest collections of meteorites, with around 5,000 individual pieces from 2,000 meteorites.
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Rocks
The Museum’s rock collection consists of approximately 123,000 samples collected from around the world during the last 250 years.
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Ores
The collection contains over 15,000 specimens and is a valuable resource for the field of economic geology.
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Minerals
The collection is one of the most important and comprehensive collections of its type in the world.
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Ocean bottom deposits
The collection is the most comprehensive British collection of seabed samples and cores.
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Collections on the move
We have set out on an ambitious programme to develop a new science and digitisation centre. As we prepare for the move, access to some collections will be affected.
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Accessing the collections
Scientists and collections management specialists can visit the collections and borrow specimens for research.
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Collections management
Our duty is to provide a safe and secure environment for all of our collections.