The Invertebrate Palaeontology Collection comprises more than 4 million fossil specimens, mainly from Victoria and Australia but also from other parts of the world. It documents the evolution of invertebrates (animals without backbones), ranging from single-celled organisms through to the many phyla of multi-celled animals, and includes many extinct groups such as trilobites, graptolites and conodonts. It covers the past 630 million years of invertebrate evolution.
The collection is subdivided into four major collections: the type and figured, taxonomic, graptolite and stratigraphic collections. It includes representative specimens of nearly all major extinct phyla of organisms and is crucial to understanding the biostratigraphic zonation, palaeoecology and palaeobiogeography of organisms and the evolution of their environments in southern Australia.
The collection incorporates the former invertebrate fossil collections of the University of Melbourne and the Geological Survey of Victoria, making it one of the largest collections of its type in Australia and the most important scientifically in a number of areas. Collection strengths include graptolites, Silurian and Devonian shelly fossils (including trilobites and echinoderms), Cretaceous insects, and Tertiary fossils.
This collection is actively curated and regularly accessed by researchers and students from Australian and overseas institutions, and is a valuable resource for development of exhibitions and public programs for Museum Victoria.
Access to the Invertebrate Palaeontology collection can be arranged by contacting Dr David Holloway (Senior Curator) or Dr Rolf Scmhidt (Collection Manager).
Significant items
- Fossil barnacles from England described and figured by Charles Darwin (including type specimens).
- Fossil brachiopods from the United Kingdom described by Thomas Davidson.
- 400 specimens of Silurian fossils from Dudley, England, collected by James Mushen of Birmingham.
- 91 Silurian fossils from Dudley, collected by Charles Ketley and purchased in September 1862.
- More than 10 000 specimens purchased from August Krantz of Bonn, Germany, from 1860 to 1868. Includes useful European reference material of Cambrian to Tertiary ages.
- F. Koch’s entire collection of Tertiary molluscs, purchased in 1880. Includes some type specimens and much material mentioned in his papers and those of Beyrich and von Koenan on the North German Oligocene.
- Late Silurian fossils from England collected by Alfred Marston of Ludlow.
- Mesozoic molluscs from England collected by Robert Damon and his son R. F. Damon of Weymouth, purchased from 1861 to 1899.
- Specimens from Professor John Morris’s collection of Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils, mostly molluscs, from England. Some of these specimens were described by Darwin, Sharpe and Davidson.
- F.S. Colliver’s large collection of Australian Tertiary fossils, presented to the Museum in 1962.
- T.S. Hall’s collection of Ordovician graptolites from Victoria, purchased after his death and including many type specimens.
- G.B. Pritchard’s graptolite and Tertiary mollusc types from Victoria.
- The large and important collection of mainly Palaeozoic and Tertiary fossils from Victoria made by George Sweet, including types, donated to the museum 1902–1905.
- Frank Cudmore’s large collection of Tertiary fossils from south-eastern Australia, donated in 1937.
- Material from localities no longer accessible (e.g. many localities in the Lilydale district, many graptolite localities), often due to property developments.