The collections of the Herman Ottó Museum related to natural sciences were already of great importance when the legal predecessor of the museum was founded in 1899.
One of our first serious paleontological finds is the mammoth tusk found at the Miskolc railway station in 1900, which is among the most striking objects of our present exhibitions.
In 1907, the natural sciences department was formed by merging the botanical, mineral and zoological collections, and then the Natural History Repository.
In 1950, the thousands of finds collected until then had to be distributed among schools of Miskolc according to state instruction, and doing this, the museum’s natural history collection was effectively ended.
In the second half of the 20th century, the natural sciences collection was essentially nonexistent, related objects were the geological and paleontological finds collected by the archeological department and the minerals of the mineral repository.
2007 was a turning point in the life of the museum. By finding the ancient trees in Bükkábrány, which are also special in the world, the Herman Ottó Museum has once again had the opportunity to create a natural history collection. In 2013, the “Pannon Sea Museum” Exhibition Building opened its doors, making place for the nearly 7 million year old bald-cypresses.
At the same time, the Geological and Natural History Repository and the Collection were established. With the creation of the repository, the museum aimed to collect, research, preserve and regularly present geological and paleontological finds from the Tertiary and Quaternary period of the earth’s history.
The first finds of the Geological and Natural History Collection include well-preserved plant remains from the diatomite mine in Erdőbénye. The 11-12 million years old imprints include Quercus kubinyii (fossil oak), maple, Zelkova and walnut.
The collection continued to grow during field collections. In 2013, from the Kazár area, the collection was expanded with Miocene shell sandstones from the Kazári Sandstone Section of the Egyházasgerge Sandstone Formation, from which hundreds of scallop imprints emerge.
In 2014, a collection in the Csanyik Valley near Miskolc enriched the museum with Miocene oyster shell.
The oldest piece in our collection is a remains of a moss animal from the Upper Carboniferous period. It was found at the no. 416 railway section between Nagyvisnyó and Dédestapolcsány. The find, along with sea lily and Brachiopoda remains, has got in the museum in 2016 with collection.
Some pieces came by donations. As a gift from Ferenc Cserpák, the positive of the footprint of a dinosaur, named Komlosaurus carbonis enriched the collection. This trace fossil was created 200 million years ago, on a seaside which is now the area of the Pécs-Vasas coal mine.
Currently, the collection contains 1467 inventoried finds. More than 90% of this is available on the Museum Digital site.