Annual Review 2023-24

Our flagship exhibition, Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur, can claim much credit for this year's success.

In the interactive family exhibition, visitors were invited to walk beneath the 2.67-tonne cast of Patagotitan mayorum.

This awe-inspiring sight drew 326,275 visitors, becoming our most popular exhibition in decades.

With special thanks to the lead sponsor, Apple TV+, as the Apple Original series Prehistoric Planet invites viewers to experience the wonders of these extraordinary creatures like never before.

Additional thanks to IAG Cargo as the Exhibition Logistics Partner who transported the cast from Argentina to Europe for the first time.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition continues its success, attracting over 170,000 visitors to South Kensington.

Celebrating the competition’s fifty-ninth year, the exhibition smashed records, with success in-year putting it on track to become both the highest-grossing and most visited in its history.

The art programme in the Jerwood Gallery unveiled a stunning new free display of Gregor Sailer’s The Polar Silk Road.

The award-winning photographer’s UK debut documents our complex relationship with the environment, the wide-reaching impacts of climate change and a rapidly changing world.

The exhibition was supported by Jerwood Foundation, Austrian Cultural Forum London and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.

Global warming and its impacts in the Arctic is a topical issue that affects us all, even if it is geographically far away.

This northern-most region of the world has been profoundly affected by the climate crisis, making scientific research there more urgent.

“Through collaboration with the Natural History Museum, I hope my work helps to translate this discussion, which is geopolitically, scientifically and socially very complex, not only in terms of content, but also visually.

Gregor Sailer
Artist and photographer

We made exciting progress in transforming our beautiful five-acre gardens, ahead of its reopening to the public in summer 2024.

One standout moment was the unveiling of a profound and moving quote from Sir David Attenborough, emphasising the urgency of protecting the natural world, aligning with our Strategy to 2031. This support from such an iconic public figure is testament to the excitement surrounding this pivotal project.

A wide variety of trusts, foundations, companies and individuals are supporting the Urban Nature Project including Amazon Web Services, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Evolution Education Trust, The Cadogan Charity, Garfield Weston Foundation, Kusuma Trust, The Wolfson Foundation, Charles Wilson and Rowena Olegario, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Clore Duffield Foundation, Workman LLP and Accenture.

No fewer than 815 new species were discovered and described by Natural History Museum scientists in 2023.

Among these was a new dinosaur from the Isle of Wight, named Vectipelta barretti in honour of our very own Professor Paul Barrett, as well as a new genus of butterfly which was named after Lord of the Rings villain Sauron.

Our researchers, including through international collaborations, generated the largest evolutionary trees ever constructed for snakes, lizards, frogs and flowering plants.

These studies shed light not only on evolutionary relationships but also on broader patterns of evolution itself.

Our experts are part of an international effort to analyse the sample of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA's OSIRIS-Rex this year.

The near-Earth asteroid serves as a time capsule from the earliest history of our Solar System and could provide important clues to the origin of organics and water that may have led to life on Earth.

We can’t wait to see what Bennu looks like, and to spend the next months and years finding out what it can tell us about the formation of the Solar System and about our own origins.

Professor Sara Russell
Senior Research Lead, Natural History Museum

A new research paper co-authored by the Natural History Museum’s Dr Adrian Glover has provided the most comprehensive report yet on biodiversity in the deep abyssal Pacific Ocean, which is being explored for potential deep-sea minerals.

We now know that the deep-sea region almost the size of Australia has thriving biodiversity and is home to many small invertebrate animals. This information could be vital to ensuring that any mining activity is legal, economic and environmentally sustainable.

This year, we accelerated our ambitious digitisation efforts, making over 300,000 items from the vast natural history collections accessible online. A highlight was the launch of the DiSSCo UK project, aiming to digitally unlock 137 million UK specimens for global research. Together with our partners, this initiative will fuel vital research into critical issues like biodiversity loss and food security.

We also secured planning permission for a cutting-edge collections, research, and digitisation centre at Thames Valley Science Park. This state-of-the-art facility will expand our research capabilities and collections, enabling the single largest relocation and digitisation of natural history specimens. This would allow us to transform current storage areas into exhibition space, bringing more wonders to the public than ever before.

DiSSCo UK is led by the NHM in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. Thames Valley Science Park is generously enabled through investment from the UK Government and UKRI.

This year, we took exciting new steps in partnership with Bloomberg to integrate nature data into financial decision-making.

Our Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), created by Natural History Museum scientists, is now entering the business realm. It will empower investors to understand their impact on nature and drive positive change.

Estimated Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) in the year 2020 at 0.25 degree resolution. Only the darkest areas have retained enough natural biodiversity to be within the proposed planetary boundary (where BII is above 90%).

Our delegation at COP28 shared vital data on biodiversity loss, contributing to important conversations on nature-based solutions and the most effective way to conserve nature and human wellbeing.

Our mission is to create advocates for the planet, so it is fantastic to be attending COP28 to engage with policy makers and influence discussions around both the role of biodiversity loss in the planetary emergency and the potential for nature-based solutions.

At COP15 the world committed to ’30 by 30’ and we are particularly excited to share our initial findings from a new piece of work at COP28 that aims to answer the critical follow up questions: which 30%, how are we doing, and who’s doing it well?

Dr Doug Gurr
Director, Natural History Museum

Schools in England collectively steward land twice the size of Birmingham. Alongside nurseries and colleges, this represents huge potential for nature recovery nationwide.

In October, we launched the National Education Nature Park with the Royal Horticultural Society and other partners, inviting all schools in England to participate. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform climate education and empower young people to act and increase biodiversity across England. The project is funded by the Department for Education.

Our global digital impact was both far-reaching and profound, engaging millions worldwide with nearly 19 million website sessions and over 17 million video views across our platforms.

Our latest podcast series, Our Broken Planet, offered listeners on every continent a deeper understanding of the planetary emergency, while providing hope for real, actionable change.