Museum collections both document and enable scientific discoveries. New species are found; specimens are collected and described. But new techniques and renewed attention can also yield discoveries long after the specimens were originally collected, leading to revisions in our understanding.

The large rock slab with spectacularly preserved fish fossils was uncovered at Canowindra in 1955. Since then, 4000 fossils of eight different fish species have been uncovered at the site. This slab shows four of those species, including Mandageria fairfaxi, NSW’s state fossil emblem.

The fish lived during the upper Devonian, about 370–360 million years ago. The Devonian is known as the Age of Fishes, due to the number and variety of fishes that lived in its marine and aquatic environments. Plants and insects were establishing themselves on land, but vertebrates had yet to emerge from the water. In the Late Devonian, many marine species died out in a mass extinction, including 97 per cent of all vertebrate species.

Above the fossil slab is a Night Parrot. Even before it was presumed to be extinct, the Night Parrot was known as Australia’s most enigmatic bird. There were no known sightings between 1912 and 1990. But in 1990 a dead specimen was discovered in western Queensland. This led to renewed efforts to find the parrot alive, and a number of recent sightings in several remote locations have shown that the species, though still very rare, is not extinct at all.

In 1898 the vessel Thetis trawled waters from Sydney to Newcastle collecting fish and invertebrates for the Museum. Over 1850 samples were collected, representing 450 species, some new to science. The collection is a snapshot of the environment from over 100 years ago and continues to be studied, with new species described as recently as 2005.

The spectacular red mineral at the bottom left is crocoite. It is an extremely fragile and very rare mineral, as the elements that form it – lead and chromium – are only rarely found together. This specimen comes from the Adelaide mine in Tasmania, one of the finest sites for crocoite in the world. Albert Chapman, whose collection is displayed on Level 1 of the Museum, purchased it in 1972.