Their objective is to conserve, investigate and promulgate the richness and diversity of the geological legacy through the rock, mineral and fossil collection.

These collections began with samples from the First National Exhibition on September 15th, 1886.  The government established the National Museum on May 4th, 1887 as a result of these exhibitions by the LX agreement, which stated that the community didn’t have a public place to deposit and classify natural products and articles that had to be a base for studying the richness and culture of our county.

Some of the researchers who worked on the Geology Section were José Fidel Tristán, Henri Pitter, Paul Schaufelberg, Alonso Segura and Luis Diego Gómez in the seventies, as a Museum Director and Chief of the Natural History Department.  With their effort they managed to make the Geology Section what we know today.

The Geology Section has about 17.150 samples.  It is formed by five collections:

The Fossil Collection:

Includes fossils from sponges, corals, mollusks, echinoderms, vertebrates, plants and mainly trace fossils.  This collection has the most important vertebrate fossil collection in the country.

The Rock and Mineral Collection:

It is formed by rocks and minerals from the country, as from an important rock collection from Europe, which constitutes a historic interest since all the samples were gathered during the first half of the XX century.

The Educational Collection:

Rocks, minerals and fossils used for educational and divulgation purposes.

The Recent Collection:

Mostly sea mollusks and corals, echinoderms and some vertebrates remain.  This collection counts with an Otolithec (sagittae) with 49 fish species from the Costa Rica South Pacific.  It represents basic comparison material needed in every collection.

The Land and River Mollusk Collection:

Part of the collection studied by the Swiss Paul Biolley at the end of the XIX century.

Consultations:

The collections in the Geology Section can be approached by qualified personnel who are working on research or educational purposes, as long as they are backed by an acknowledged institution.  Contact: geologia@museocostarica.go.cr

Recommended link: Colegio de Geólogos de Costa Rica