Ground floor - Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology - DSC02364

Naemorhedus baileyi - Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology - DSC02442

Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology - DSC02568

The Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology (昆明动物博物馆) is located on the campus of

Kunming Institute of Zoology Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) (中国科学院昆明动物研究所), one of the 20 biological institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is one of China's first class zoological research institutes, located in Kunming, Yunnan ...

, Jiaochang East Road, Kunming,

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

, China. The museum is an important project of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...

Knowledge Innovation Program, and a joint project of the academy and Yunnan Provincial Government. The Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology presents the diversity of fauna, past and present, of

southwest China Southwest China () is a region in the south of the People's Republic of China. Geography Southwest China is a rugged and mountainous region, transitioning between the Tibetan Plateau to the west and the Chinese coastal hills (东南丘陵) and ...

. It started earth construction in 2000 and opened to the public since November 2006. Various specimens collected by several generations of scientists in Kunming Institute of Zoology are fundamental basis for the establishment of the

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 thes ...

. A trio of dino-skeletons dominate the prehistoric exhibit on the first floor. These plant-eaters stomped around Yunnan about 200 million years ago. Though the biggest of the three is a cast, the smaller ones are genuine bones, exhumed from Yunnan's Lufeng Basin in the 1980s. Though the prehistoric exhibit is the most impressive, there are plenty of animals to be seen on all of the museum's three floors. An array of taxidermied mammals and birds lines the display cases of the second floor. Up another flight of stairs reveals a "Rainforest Adventure," which walks visitors along a path through synthetic trees, bird calls and a darkened cave. There are rigid fish and snakes entombed in formaldehyde jars. Because of the museum's affiliation with the

, it is well positioned as both a tourist attraction and a home to future zoological scholarship. Most of the visitors come with a scientific background.

References and further reading

* http://www.kiz.ac.cn/en/kiz/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=79
China's biggest zoological museum opens in Kunming
CAS News
Kunming Natural History Museum Opens
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kunming Natural History Museum Of Zoology Museums in Kunming Natural history museums in China

See also

References and further reading