Press releases 2025

A introduced flatworm from South America could affect the native soil ecosystem as predators of earthworms and snails.

The Natural History Museum Vienna is dedicating a special exhibition to glacier photography by Jürgen Merz. From 20 November 2025 to 10 January 2027, the exhibition "Alpine Glaciers in Transition: Historical Comparison Photographs" will be on display.

With impressive 3D digital copies from the Volkskundemuseum Wien, kulturpool.at has recently made more than two million objects accessible. Already 126 museums, libraries and archives can be found via Austria's central search portal for digitized cultural heritage.

The year 2024 was a good year for the Austrian meteorites! In addition to the spectacular case at Haag (Lower Austria) on 24 October 2024, a promising looking stone was already brought to NHM Vienna at the beginning of September last year. A look inside the find revealed: It is a stony meteorite!

The Natural History Museum Vienna invites you to a press tour of the Fools’ Tower:
Presentation of the new theme room: The Art of Moulage. Immortalised clinical pictures 

on Tuesday, 7 October 2025, at 10.30 a.m. 
in the Pathological-Anatomical Collection in the Narrenturm (Fools’ Tower) 
Spitalgasse 2, University Campus Hof 6, 1090 Vienna

on Tuesday, 23 September 2025, at 10.30 a.m. in the lecture hall of the NHM Vienna

At today’s press conference on “Austria’s Natural Sciences 2.0: Digital – Innovative – European” at the Natural History Museum (NHM) Vienna, the speakers pointed out that Austria has been a European pioneer of providing digital access to science collections for many years. 

Austria becomes part of the European research infrastructure for scientific collections DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections)
 
Press conference on Thursday, 11 September 2025, 9 a.m., in the lecture hall of the NHW Vienna

on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, at 10:30 a.m. in the lecture hall of the NHM Vienna

Starting immediately and until the end of 2025, the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM Wien) will start with a special action: The popular wednesday evening lectures are free of charge for all visitors. This new offer enables a low-threshold participation in lectures on scientific and cultural-historical topics.

Invitation to the press conference on Thursday, 11 September 2025, at 9 a.m. in the lecture hall of the NHM Vienna
(Entry: from 08.30 am via the main entrance of the NHM Vienna, Maria-Theresien-Platz)

What do flower power, golden nails, and a red queen have to do with geology?
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Mathias Harzhauser, Director of the Department of Geology & Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM), takes readers on a journey to distant worlds and long-lost eras when Earth was still young. In a witty and engaging narrative, he spans millions of years, recounting how catastrophes, feedback loops, and evolution casually wiped out entire branches of the tree of life while allowing others to flourish — and offers glimpses into how our story might continue. You've never experienced geology like this before!

It is of particular concern to the Natural History Museum Vienna to make the central importance of science-based environmental education visible. With the National Park Institute Petronell, the NHM Vienna operates a location in one of the most beautiful areas of the Danube floodplains.

A new mineral was recently named after an FWF project leader, employed at the Natural History Museum Vienna. This new mineral belongs to the tourmaline group. Tourmalines are used, among other things, as gemstones and for technical applications. The aluminum- and boron-rich tourmaline ertlite was named after the internationally renowned mineralogist and crystallographer Dr. Andreas Ertl. Dr. Ertl has been working on tourmalines for 30 years and has discovered and studied numerous new minerals himself.

During excavation work in Hallstatt (on the property of the Kocsar-Riezinger family in the Seestraße), archaeological layers of scientific importance were uncovered: Medieval terracing walls, a burnt layer with coins, bricks and fragments of vessels of the Roman period, as well as up to one meter thick layers from the Latène period (Late Iron Age, c 450-15 BC). Around 1,000 artefacts from different epochs have recently been recovered.

The most important strategies of life are often deeply rooted in Earth's history. To understand how and when organisms began to interact with arsenic, we have to travel an astonishing 2.1 billion years into the past.

on Tuesday, 1 July 2025, at 10.30 a.m. in Room 21 of the NHM Vienna, Maria-Theresien-Platz

On Saturday, 14 and Sunday, 15 June 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Natural History Museum Vienna and the Salt Worlds Hallstatt invite you to the event weekend ‘Archaeology on the Mountain’ in Hallstatt. In the branch office of the NHM Vienna on Hallstatt's Salzberg, interesting facts and the latest archaeological research results are presented at numerous stations. This year’s event will focus on ‘glittering, clattering and sounding metals’.

On Tuesday, 10 June 2025, at 10:30 a.m., the Westermayr family will present the Haag meteorite to the NHM’s meteorite collection.

on Tuesday, 1 July 2025, at 10.30 a.m. in Room 21 of the NHM Vienna, Maria-Theresien-Platz

On Tuesday, 3 June 2025, at 10.30 a.m.
Location: Pathological-Anatomical Collection in the Narrenturm, Spitalgasse 2, University Campus, Courtyard 6, 1090 Vienna

On Tuesday, 10 June 2025, at 10:30 a.m., the Westermayr family will present the Haag meteorite to the NHM’s meteorite collection.

Was the Plateosaurus better armed than previously thought? A new study provides surprising clues: the herbivorous dinosaur, which lived around 215 to 205 million years ago in the late Triassic period, may have actively used its long tail for defense – similar to some lizards today.

on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, at 10.30 a.m. in the lecture hall of the NHM Vienna with a visit to the new Children's Ice Age Room (Room 16 on the 1st floor)

Entry: from 10 a.m. via the main entrance of the NHM Vienna, Maria-Theresien-Platz

on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, at 10.30 a.m. in the lecture hall of the NHM Vienna, followed by a visit to the new Kindereizeitsaal (Room 16 on the 1st floor)

Entry: from 10 a.m. via the main entrance of the NHM Vienna, Maria-Theresien-Platz

Can plants reveal the secrets of survival during Earth’s darkest days?

In the most comprehensive global analysis of genetic diversity ever undertaken, an international team of scientists has found that genetic diversity is being lost across the globe but that conservation efforts are helping to safeguard species.