Museum Scientific Area
This comprises the Collections and Research departments and the Documentation Centre, and all the activities undertaken by them, that is, conservation, description and study of the natural and documentary heritage of their resources. In fact, everything that goes on at the Museum would be pointless were it not for its fundamental, primary purpose which is to safeguard and preserve that heritage.
The collections are kept in store and are preserved and studied by biologists and geologists who document them (taking inventory, cataloguing, computerising, and publishing databases) and make them available for the scientific community. They use the different laboratories –the preparation lab, the restoration and preventive conservation lab, and the technological lab– for these purposes.
The Museum participates in research projects with other public institutions such as the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones científicas) (Spanish National Research Council) and national and foreign universities, while also developing its own projects connected with the collections it holds and with objectives relating to the local territory.
The Documentation Centre places the information resources it administers at the disposal of the Museum experts and the public.