[4] The museum reopened on 23 June 2018 after a major redevelopment[2][5] for which it had been awarded a grant of £1.8m by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

[7] Much of the museum's material derives from the great collecting expeditions of the 19th century, which provided the first documentation of the fauna in many parts of the world.

The museum added further collections including birds from William Swainson and animals from the Cambridge Philosophical Society, to which Charles Darwin himself had contributed.

Cambridge was a centre of major importance for the development of biology, and several of the individuals associated with the museum were central figures in the most active areas of scientific debate.

Most of the fish specimens are stored in spirit, some of them having been collected by Darwin himself on the voyage of HMS Beagle from 1831 - 1836.