National Taiwan Museum

Biological Collection of National Taiwan Museum

The National Taiwan Museum is the oldest natural history museum in Taiwan, with a collection of approximately 70,000 biological specimens. In addition to specimens of extinct species such as the Formosan Clouded Leopard and Cyrenodonax formosana, the collection includes the contributions of numerous scholars in the field of natural history from the Japanese colonial period to the present. These contributions encompass a wide range of specimens, including fish specimens collected by Johnson T.F. Chen, shell specimens collected by Yasuichi Horikawa and Kin-Yang Lai, snake specimens by Ming-Chung Tu, seaweed specimens by Young-Meng Chiang and Su-Fang Huang, crustacean specimens by Chia-Hsiang Wang, insect specimens by John B. Heppner, bird specimens from the Taipei Bird Rescue Center, as well as bryophyte and lichen specimens collected by Chung-K'uei Wang, Shan-Hsiung Lin, Ming-Jou Lai, and others.
In recent years, the National Taiwan Museum has been actively promoting the digitization and integration of its collection data for open. It continues to explore its role as a national biodiversity repository in the digital age, aiming to contribute to the foundation of Taiwan's biodiversity infrastructure.