The symbol of the museum is an almost complete woolly mammoth skeleton, found in Nevlje near Kamnik in 1938.
[1] Its official publication, published since autumn 1978, has been named Scopolia in honour of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, a leading Carniolan naturalist of the 18th century.
After the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the name was changed to the National Museum.
In 2005, the museum acquired its largest object, a skeleton of a young female fin whale named Leonora, which was found dead on the Slovenian coast in 2003.
[4] Hohenwart's collection of mollusc shells comprises about 5,000 specimens, dating from 1831 and originating mainly from the Indo-Pacific.