Dalian Natural History Museum, Natural history museum in Heishi Reef, China.

The Dalian Natural History Museum stands on the Heishijiao coast in a modern European-style building of 15,000 square metres, with 10,000 square metres of exhibition space. Its twelve halls cover the earth, dinosaurs, marine life, Northeast China forest animals, wetlands, species diversity and Liaoxi palaeontological fossils. The museum also holds a 270,000-square-metre sea area, the only Chinese museum with one.

The museum traces its origin to a geological survey office set up in 1907 by the South Manchuria Railway Company. Renamed several times, it became the Northeast Regional Museum under Soviet geologist Yegorov after 1945, then the Northeast Resources Museum in 1950. On 3 September 1959 it received its present name, inscribed by Guo Moruo, and in October 1998 the new building at Heishijiao opened.

The museum's name was inscribed by Guo Moruo, then president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, when the institution took its present title on 3 September 1959. Its 12 exhibition halls include one added in September 2005 for the Kenneth Behring gallery, opened on 23 May 2006, which displays 114 African specimens donated over three years, among them elephants, cheetahs and hippos.

The museum offers modern facilities with interactive displays, shops, and dining options for visitors. It is wise to allow several hours to explore the different collections at a comfortable pace.

The museum's largest specimen is a North Pacific right whale 17.1 metres long and weighing 66.7 tonnes, displayed alongside a nest of Psittacosaurus fossils. In 2018 it was named one of China's first Grade A palaeontological fossil collection institutions.