It is part of the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo (Natural Sciences School) of the National University of La Plata.

The building, 135 meters (443 feet) long, today houses three million fossils and relics (including 44,000 botanical items), an amphitheatre opened in 1992, and a 58,000-volume library, serving over 400 university researchers.

Childhood excursions with his father and older brother led the 14-year-old Francisco Moreno to mount a display of his growing collection of anthropological, fossil and bone findings at his family's Buenos Aires home in 1866, unwittingly laying the foundations for the future La Plata Museum.

[2] Internationally respected naturalists such as Paul Broca and Rudolf Virchow contributed valuable donations to the institution, which was incorporated into the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum.

The 1882 establishment of the city of La Plata as the new capital of the Province of Buenos Aires led the provincial legislature to requisition the collection in 1884 for the construction of a new facility set in a north side park designed by renowned urbanist Charles Thays.

These limitations helped persuade Moreno to incorporate the museum into the new and growing University of La Plata (today Argentina's second-largest) in 1906.

Because of the planned construction of a levee in the Nile river that would flood the zone, UNESCO, and the Sudanese, Egyptian and Argentine governments funded a reservation and investigation rescue mission.