The Micropalaeontology Collection at The Natural History Museum, London – impact, challenges and opportunities

The Micropalaeontology Collection at The Natural History Museum, London has an estimated 598,000 units that contain over 2 million individual items. This contribution focuses on the Fossil and Recent Foraminifera, Fossil Ostracoda, Conodonta, Radiolaria, associated samples, residues and microfossil models. A brief history of the staff and collection storage, a brief description of the collection and its current state is presented. Impact is investigated by analysing its visitor record of 9449 visitor days between 1963–2024, a history of over 1579 publications on the collections since 1822 and digital records available on the museum’s data portal. The distribution suggests that impact has been heavily influenced by the level and expertise of research and curatorial staffing, the ability to advertise the collection to users with online collections level descriptions and the availability of external funding to support visits. The collection represents the significant role that micropalaeontology played in the early days of industrial palaeontology and scanning electron microscopy. It also underpins Global but mainly British Stratigraphy as well as supporting interpretation of environments relating to the early human occupation of Britain. University collections represent a long history of training Micropalaeontologists in the UK. Future impact will partly rely on engaging with the micropalaeontological community to help enhance the quality of the collection’s digital data and encourage and recognise use. Activities could include using new CT scanning technologies to illustrate key specimens, providing online collections level data about currently undigitised samples, residues and assemblage slides and using the collection to train the micropalaeontologists of the future.