After 42-year unremitting efforts, the Qinghai-Tibet Biological Specimen Museum under the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences has accumulated a total of 424,500 biological specimens, a museum with the richest specimen collections. It is a museum the largest of its kind both in number and the most complete in varieties for the biological specimens of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau..
According to introduction, the museum has collected 220, 000 plant specimens with 50,000 associated, and the animal specimens including birds, beasts, fish and amphibians, numbering 154,400 in total. As Wu Yuhu, researcher and head of the specimen museum, introduced the collections of the museum boast of exclusive regional advantages. Aside from a large number of ordinary specimens characterized of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the museum also collects specimens of rare and unique species, he said. And those that have been on the brink of extinction or have been extinct and model specimens of about 200 biological new classification populations and many specimens in the museum are specimens, the exclusive valuables of the Chinese nation.
Wu said, as a specimen museum mainly collecting biological specimens on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the museum has become China's and the world's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau biological specimen museum whether in terms of quantity, variety or coverage. From 1991 up to now, the museum has received visitors, a total of 300 person-times, including visiting scholars and those who have ever worked in the museum. Biological scientists from countries and regions such as China, the United States, Britain, Germany etc. also came to study the specimens in the museum. To date, the museum has lent almost 6,000 specimens home and abroad.
As introduced, over the years, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Biological Specimen Museum has been open to people from all walks of life, especially to elementary school pupils and students of secondary schools for free. It has thereby played an active role in arousing the enthusiasm of the youth in the study of, and setting their hearts on sciences.
(People's Daily February 26, 2004)
