Muzeum Przyrodnicze Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego - historia kolekcji

The Natural History Museum, Department of Experimental Zoology and Evolutionary Bio- logy, University of Łódź, is a continuator of the Municipal Natural History Museum in Łódź which was created in 1930. The present Museum collection contains over 100 000 specimens, encompassing many taxonomic groups of animals from all over the world. Insects are the most numerous, in particular butterflies, estimated at around 45 000, hymenoptera, around 25 000 and coleoptera, around 14 000. Among particularly valued and generally known exhibits there is a complete skeleton of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), found in the Tatras and reconstructed by Edward Potęga, the aurochs’ skull (Bos primigenius), a spider crab preparation (Macrocheira kaempferi), as well as collections of Polish birds representing an almost complete array of species from Central Poland, Polish butterflies collected by Zygmunt Śliwiński and a collection of skeletons prepared by Izydor Siemieniuk. Many exhibits , both vertebrates and invertebrates, are of historical value and come from the early 20th-century collections.