Natural Science Museums of SPbSU

Natural science collections of St. Petersburg State University are presented at 5 sites:

• The Mineralogical Museum was founded in 1785 and traces its origins to the Cabinet of Natural History of the Teachers Seminary. The museum has the oldest mineralogical collection in Russia. Famous scientists took part in the formation of the reference collection of minerals: D. I. Mendeleev, E. K. Hofman and others.
• The Paleontological Museum was founded in 1868 as a Geological Cabinet by the first professor of geology of the University A.A. Foreigntsev. The core of the museum collections is the collection of one of the founders of domestic paleontology - E.I. Eichvaldak to his capital work "Paleontology of Russia", which contains descriptions of more than a thousand new species from different groups of extinct organisms. From the 1980s to 2020, the museum was called "Paleontological-stratigraphic". - Paleontological Cabinet (Museum) on the 16th line was organized together with the Department of Paleontology by Professor M. E. Yanishevsky in 1919. The exposition of the Paleontological Cabinet-Museum is structured according to a systematic principle and demonstrates the development and diversity of life on Earth. The Paleontological Museum dates back to 1865, when the Paleontological Cabinet was created under the leadership of E. I. Hoffman. The modern museum also includes the collections of the Geological Cabinet, founded by A. A. Inostrantsev in 1873, and the collections of the Paleontological Cabinet of the Department of Paleontology, founded in 1919 by M. E. Yanishevsky. At these two sites of the Paleontological Museum (University Embankment, 7-9 and 16 lines V.O., 29) fossils representing a documentary historical chronicle of the development of life on Earth are collected. The exposition of the museum is devoted to the evolution of life - from the oldest forms, which are several billion years old, to animals - contemporaries of ancient man.
• Thematic showcases allow you to learn more about amazing animals of the past and bright discoveries of paleontologists of SPbU, the Academy of Sciences and the Geological Committee of Russia. The monographic part of the museum contains unique specimens of fossils, according to which scientists describe new species of extinct animals and plants. The museum funds number more than 47 thousand fossil plants and animals. - The Petrographic Museum began to form in the bowels of the Geological Cabinet from the 70s of the XIX century on the initiative of Professor A.A. Inostrantsev.
• The museum contains collections of outstanding scientists - F.Y. Levinson-Lessing, N.M. Przhevalsky, A.A. Polkanov, N.A. Eliseev and many others. Today, in the petrographic museum, visitors will be able to see the oldest rocks of the Earth, trace the evolution of the inanimate nature of the planet, because rocks are a stone chronicle of the Earth. The Herbarium of St. Petersburg is one of the oldest and largest herbarium storages in Russia, with a total fund of about 1,400,000 samples. Its value is internationally recognized, it is included in all catalogs and summaries of the herbarians of the world, it is assigned the acronym (index) LECB. The earliest samples from his collection date from the first quarter of the XVII century.