The Shanghai Natural History Museum is a museum of natural sciences. The museum,  is one of the largest of its kind. It is dedicated to natural history. It is something which adds to the beauty of Shanghai along with some other great monuments.

The Shanghai Natural History Museum is built at 260 Yan’an Dong Lu in Huangpu at Henan Nan Lu and is open on days from Tuesday to Sunday from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. One can get the ticket by 3:30 pm last.

The museum has a variety of specimens of different kinds. It has around 240,000 samples which include animal specimens around 62,000, plant specimens around 135,000, around 700 specimens of the Stone Age, and around 1,700 minerals specimens. Yellow River mammoth, giant salamander, giant panda are some of the species which are found only in China.

There are exhibits as old as 140 million years in the form of dinosaur skeleton. It is the largest one in the museum. The dinosaur namely Mamenuchisaurus hochangensis Young et Zhao is almost four stories high. It is from Sichuan Province. One can also find human embryos and some mummies. No changes have been made to the displays present there and one can locate signs in Chinese in some of them. There are sections depicting the evolution of human being and primitive civilizations are perfectly described. The description of the displays also seek apologies for errors in any respect if present, like ability, time etc.

The building in which the museum has been set up was a British structure known as Cotton Exchange in the colonial days. It was the year 1923 then and the museum was set in the year 1956. The museum lacks proper maintenance as the paint in some parts are coming out and some exhibits are also appearing to be disintegrating. So there is a dire need of updating as well. The floor of the museum is in mosaic and the windows have stained glass. The lobby points out at the great creation it was in the past. But the elevated road being constructed in front of the building is dishonoring the great museum.