Naturwissenschaftliches Museum Osnabrück, Natural history museum in Osnabrück, Germany

The Naturwissenschaftliches Museum Osnabrück is a natural history museum in the city that presents collections across multiple exhibition spaces. The displays include animal specimens, plant materials, fossils, and minerals arranged in thematic halls.

The Natural Science Society of Osnabrück was founded in 1870 to promote knowledge of nature in the Principality of Osnabrück; in 1879 the Museum Association rented rooms in the former district court for a first exhibition. The city took over the museum and its collections in 1929, and the natural science department became an independent municipal natural history museum in 1971. Its current building, designed around the spiral form of an ammonite and including a planetarium, opened in 1988.

The museum has been a Regional Environmental Education Centre since 1997, running programmes for schools, kindergartens and private visitors all year. Its 2023 permanent exhibition is divided into astronomy, water, forest, open land and urban life, and includes a mushroom telephone and a 180-degree cinema.

The museum stands on Schölerberg next to Osnabrück Zoo and the Boden adventure park of the TERRA.vita Geopark. The lower floor, built as the planned second construction phase, holds a conference room for up to 200 people and a smaller seminar room. The museum garden and outdoor grounds belong to the site.

The museum's geology collection holds globally important fossils from the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) of the Piesberg near Osnabrück, including a huge petrified sigillaria root. The permanent exhibition opened in 2023 features this root alongside a reconstructed Carboniferous forest where augmented reality brings extinct animals back to life.