The Museum’s collection of vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians) is one of the richest in Asia, and the largest of its kind in the Middle East. Comprising approximately 60,000 specimens, it represents about 2,000 species. Approximately 80% of all items were collected in Israel, and the rest came from different places around the world. The collection has been fully computerized, and the database contains size measurements for many of the items on display. Read more

The fish collection at the Museum includes fish collected in and around Israel since the 1940s, alongside items collected by delegations of Israeli and foreign researchers in the southern Red Sea and the Seychelles Islands, and specimens from other places, donated by foreign scientists. All in all, the collection encompasses over 15,000  items, including more than 130,000 fish. It facilitates the study and documentation of fish, as well as changes in aquatic systems resulting from the direct and indirect actions of humans.
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The insect collection is one of the Museum’s most active collections, maintained by a staff of about 15 scientists, curators, research students and volunteers. The collection includes about three million items representing Israel’s insect species, as well as tens of thousands of items from different regions around the world. These provide a basis for taxonomic, phylogenetic and ecological research for the Museum’s scientists and their students, as well as researchers from other academic institutions in Israel and overseas. The collection also includes a range of live insects, used for instruction purposes. Activities aim to preserve, document and study Israel’s insect community, estimated to include about 20,000 species, at least one thousand of which remain unknown to science. In addition to their research and routine work, the collection’s staff provides identification services to a range of government, academic, commercial and private organizations.
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The Museum’s collection of water plants is the largest of its kind in the Middle East – comprising about 30,000 items collected since the 1950s in Israel and the Sinai Peninsula. The items represent various groups of organisms: algae (green, red, brown and blue), sea grasses and the parasitic fungi that live on them, submerged and floating plants from freshwater ecosystems in Israel, and of course bryophytes. Some of the items have been desiccated and mounted on paper, while others are preserved in alcohol.
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The paleobiological collection curated at the Steinhardt Museum include archaeozoology, archaeobotany, archaeomalacology, paleontology and ancient DNA related materials. Most biological materials derive from archaeological sites in Israel excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and other institutions. They enable scholars to reconstruct environmental conditions of the past, human ways of life, and population movements of humans, plants and animals.
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In 1998 a tissue collection was established at the Museum of Natural History to meet the increasing need for samples for molecular research. Focusing on terrestrial vertebrates from the Middle East, the collection includes tissue samples harvested from approximately 10,000 items belonging to 275 species of birds, 141 species of mammals, 105 species of reptiles and 6 species of amphibians. The samples are taken from dead animals collected by rangers from the Nature and Parks Authority and by researchers working in the field. All of the tissue samples belong to voucher specimens from the different collections. The samples are preserved in ethanol and stored in deep freeze. In addition to the terrestrial vertebrate tissue collection, since the beginning of the 2000’s all the vouchered specimens from the fish collection (410 species, 29,000 specimens) and several marine invertebrate collections (including sponges, crustaceans echinoderms and polychaetes) are preserved and stored in 85% ethanol for future molecular applications.

Molecular systematics and tissue collection
Prof. Dorothée Huchon — Curator
Dr. Tamar Feldstein-Farkash — Collections Manager

The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research was established in 2015 as part of the Faculty of Medicine and the Steinhardt Museum as home to the physical anthropology section of the museum. The Center provides a singular environment for local and international researchers to study the biology of modern humans, our origins and routes of dispersal.
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