The museum has a collection of about 70,000 specimens covering animals, minerals, paleontology, plants, and Stone Age period wares.

[2] A new museum building in the Yuzhong District[3] was under construction as of 2013, consisting of six exhibition halls and covering an area of 14.4 hectares.

[5] It was designed with an idea from nature, namely the spreading roots of Ficus virens, which is Chongqing's official city tree.

The predecessors of the museum were the Science Academy of West China, founded in 1930 by the businessman Lu Zuofu (1893–1952) and the Western Museum of China, which amalgamated with the Chinese West Academy and over ten other institutions in 1943.

The museum has six permanent exhibition halls: Animal Planet, Dinosaur World, Landscape Metropolis, Earth Mystery, Life Stream, and Ecological Homeland.