The “Colonial Geological Museum” from the Portuguese Geological Survey

context and memories

Abstract

During the last decades of the XIXth century, of scientific exploration of Africa’s Portuguese territories, several collections of rocks, minerals and fossils arrived regularly at the Geological Survey. Part of those collections was studied and published, making it possible to identify and outline the distribution of the main geological formations. The recognition of the importance of these collections for the understanding of the geology, not only of the Portuguese colonies, but of southern Africa as a whole, led to the creation, in 1905, of a Colonial Geological Museum, which existed until the 1970’s.