The collection comprises close to 25,000 inventory numbers. The oldest items are fossils that were recovered from quarries in 1850 and added to the collection as early as 1869. Further historical collections of marine animal fossils from the Mesozoic era of the Harz foreland and from the Paleozoic era of the Harz came to the museum in 1903.
The “Magdeburgica” form an important part of the collection: plant and marine animal fossils from the Magdeburg greywacke (about 325 million years old), marine animal fossils from the burg greensand (about 35 million years old) and mammal skeletal remains from the gravels of the Magdeburg glacial valley (several 100 to 200,000 years old).
The collections also include a large number of fossils from all periods of the Earth’s history – from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous of the northern Harz foreland (Subherzynes Becken) and from the Harz Devonian. Particularly noteworthy are fossilised remains of armoured fish from the famous sites of the Middle Devonian of Scotland (Coccosteus cuspidatus, 400-million-year-old Middle Old Red Sandstone). Plants from the time of the European stone coal forests of the Upper Carboniferous, as well as dinosaur and marine animal remains from the Zechstein Sea deposits of the Late Permian, come from the former mining areas of Saxony-Anhalt. Other remarkable collection pieces include the fossilised shells of various ammonite species from the northern edge of the Harz. The museum also has a primeval crocodile and an ichthyosaur from the world-famous Jurassic Posidonia Shale of Holzmaden in Swabia.
