Field Museum of Natural History Invertebrates (FMNH-Invertebrate Zoology)

Established in 1938, the Division of Invertebrates is in charge of all invertebrate groups except insects and other non-marine arthropods. The first curator of this Division was Fritz Haas, formerly of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Haas (1938 - 1969) and his successor Alan Solem (1957 - 1990) built massive mollusk collections, particularly strong in unionid bivalves and terrestrial snails, reflecting their respective research interests. Current curators Rüdiger Bieler (1990 -) and Janet Voight (1990 -) focus their research and collection-building on marine molluscan groups. The varied curatorial research interests, the collecting efforts of past and present collections managers (e.g., John Slapcinsky and Jochen Gerber), and acquisitions of private collections and "orphan collections" have contributed to this large collection.

Curator: Rüdiger Bieler, rbieler@fieldmuseum.org
Collection Type: Preserved Specimens
Management: Data snapshot of local collection database
Last Update: 1 October 2024
IPT / DwC-A Source:
Digital Metadata: EML File
Rights Holder: Copyright © 2012 The Field Museum of Natural History
Access Rights: http://fieldmuseum.org/about/copyright-information
Collection Statistics
  • 280,787 specimen records
  • 90,809 (32%) georeferenced
  • 5,854 (2%) with images (8,610 total images)
  • 19 GenBank genetic references
  • 230,911 (82%) identified to species
  • 1,161 families
  • 4,505 genera
  • 16,798 species
  • 17,700 total taxa (including subsp. and var.)
Extra Statistics
Geographic Distribution
Click on the specimen record counts within the parenthesis to return the records for that term
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology through an award titled "Advancing Revisionary Taxonomy and Systematics: Integrative Research and Training in Tropical Taxonomy" (DEB-1456674). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.