Fossils From the Arctic in the Collections of the Natural History Museum in Oslo,Norway

Abstract

The fossils from the Arctic in the palaeontological collections of the Natural History Museum in Oslo (NHMO), Norway, cover most taxonomic groups and stratigraphic ages. They have proved useful in many research projects by adding important data, or by being the sole basis for these projects. The collections are well curated and most parts of them are registered in computer databases. Museum collections like those at the NHMO help to document the evolution of organismal groups in the (present-day) Arctic, and the palaeoecological and palaeoclimatological conditions they lived under. They are a resource for science by keeping records of fossils and rocks from remote locations, some of them with restricted access today (e.g., Novaya Zemlya, Russia). Not least they also document the history of scientific exploration and collecting culture over time. The history of exploration and appropriation of land in the Arctic, where many areas were considered to be “no man’s land” until the early twentieth century, is reflected in the collections, as is the building of a national Norwegian identity through polar expeditions in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.