Museum of Zoology Dresden, Zoological museum in Dresden, Germany

The Museum of Zoology Dresden is part of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden. Its main holdings, more than six million objects, are stored in the A. B. Meyer Building in Dresden-Klotzsche, where they occupy an entire floor; the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology sits one floor below. Only a small branch in Moritzburg and an exhibition in the Japanisches Palais provide display space, so the Klotzsche building is open to the public only to a limited extent.

The museum traces its origin to the Kunstkammer established in 1560 by Elector August of Saxony. In 1728, Augustus the Strong separated the natural history collections from the art collections and housed them in the Zwinger, which is considered the founding of the natural history collections. In 1849, the Zwinger fire destroyed the museum except for a small part of the bird collection; it reopened in 1857. Since 1874, under director Adolf Bernhard Meyer, the museum has been called the Royal Zoological and Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum.

The institution publishes the scientific journal Vertebrate Zoology, contributing to zoological research through studies of taxonomy, systematics, and species documentation.

The main holdings sit in the A. B. Meyer building in Klotzsche, northern Dresden, and are only partly open to the public; a small branch is in Moritzburg and an exhibition is housed in the Japanisches Palais. Loans are possible and material can be studied in the collection. The zoological library holds around 60,000 volumes and 60,000 other units.

The collection includes about 53,000 type specimens, including holotypes, lectotypes, and syntypes that serve as reference material for describing approximately 15,000 animal species and subspecies. These original records are invaluable for global taxonomic research.