The Shanghai Natural History Museum (;

Shanghainese The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the Districts of Shanghai, central districts of the Shanghai, City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as ...

: Zånhae Zyzoe Pohvehguoe) is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

dedicated to natural history in the city of

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

. It is one of the largest museums of natural sciences in China. Formerly housed in the Shanghai Cotton Exchange Building, the museum was moved to a purpose-built site in the Jing'an Sculpture Park in 2015.

Location

Shanghai Natural History Museum - entrance

The museum was established in 1956 in the Shanghai Cotton Exchange Building, a classical British structure built in 1923. It was located at 260 East Yan'an Road in Huangpu District, near the intersection of South Henan Road. It was designated a Heritage Building by the Shanghai Municipal Government in 1994. However, the

Yan'an Elevated Road Yan'an Elevated Road () is an elevated expressway in the city of Shanghai, China. It runs along Yan'an Road in its entirety, continuing from the east terminus of G50 Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway at Huqingping Interchange (close to Hongqiao Int ...

has since been constructed within meters in front of the building. The new 44,517 square-meter building is in the Jing'an Sculpture Park. Opened to the public in 2015, the Shanghai Natural History Museum has moved to the new location.

Collections and exhibits

The museum has a collection of 240,000 samples, including over 62,000 pieces of animal specimens, 135,000 plant specimens, 700 specimens of the

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...

, and 1,700 specimens of minerals. There are also rare species which cannot be found elsewhere outside China, such as a

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

, a giant

salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten ...

, a giant

panda The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes use ...

, and a

Yangtze Alligator The Chinese alligator (; ), also known as the Yangtze alligator (), China alligator, or historically the muddy dragon, is a crocodilian endemic to China. It and the American alligator (''A. mississippiensis'') are the only living species in the ...

. The largest exhibit is a 140-million-year-old

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

skeleton of '' Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis'' Young et Zhao from

Sichuan Province Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

, which is over four stories high. The museum also has two

mummies A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furth ...

and several human

embryos An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sper ...

References

External links

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Shanghai Natural History Museum — Some photos
{{authority control 1956 establishments in China Buildings and structures completed in 1923 Museums established in 1956 Museums in Shanghai Natural history museums in China Jing'an District

Location

Collections and exhibits

See also

References

External links