NMNH Department of Mineral Sciences Home PageNational Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
   Search the Department of Mineral Sciences Collections
Search the NMNH Department of Mineral Sciences

Detailed Search of the Mineral Sciences Collections

Enter any terms in the boxes below and click on the "Search" button. For other search types, select one of the options beneath the search box.

Partial words may be entered using an asterisk (*) for a wildcard. Wildcard searches may be quite slow, please be patient. If you choose to enter more than one term in a field, only records with both terms will be returned.

Please be aware that some searches on single, broad terms may produce very large result sets that require long processing times. Therefore, narrowing searches with additional terms should be considered. Searches will return a maximum of 5000 records, and the results are sorted by Meteorite Name (when present) and Catalog Number.

Please note: we have electronic records for more than 90% of our collections, but images for less than 10%. We constantly add new data and correct records. If searches do not return expected data users are welcome to contact Department of Mineral Sciences collection managers.


Enter search term(s)...

      List items only with images

  Rock/Mineral    [e.g. Basalt]
  Mineral Color     [Select from list or enter color; e.g. red, brown, green, yellow, etc.]
  Mineral Cut    [Select from list]
  Volcano Name    [Select from list]
  Commodity/Metal    [Select from list]
  Meteorite Name    [e.g. Allende]
  Meteorite Type    [Select from list]
  Ocean    [Select from list]
  Sea/Gulf    [e.g. Gulf of Mexico]
  Country    [Select from list]
  Province/State    [e.g. Florida]
  District/County    [e.g. Montgomery]
  Mine District    [Select from list]
  Mine Name     [Select from list; up to 3 leading characters narrows lookup]
  Expedition Name    [e.g. U.S. Navy Expedition]
  Preparation