As the only Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Museum of Biology (QPMB) , QPMB was founded in 1962, which has the most amounts of biological specimens of this Special Areas (Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau) in the world. The Museum is becoming a multifunctional installation for scientific research, collection, scientific knowledge popularization and academic ex-changes, and also is cited by Worldwide Famous Specimen Museum Index. As a leading museum of China, QPMB has established long-term cooperative relationships with quite some world-known museums and research institutions. QPMB has been designated as a national-level (as well as provincial and city levels) base for popularizing sciences among the youth.
After unremitting effort of more than 40 years, the amount of specimens in our museum reach to 447,000 including Herbarium 286,000; Insect 110,000; Fish 27,000 (650 species); Amphibian and Reptile 7,500 (173 species); Bird 10,000 (700 species) and Mammal 6,500 (340 species). Besides the specimens of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, QPMB also store specimens of rare, unique and endangered species and specimens other part of China (Sichuan, Gansu, Xinjiang , Shaanxi and so on ). QPMB also preserved type specimens of more than 300 species.
From 2007, QPMB continued the Virtual Herbarium database construction project, input information for 205,358 specimens and 123,888 images.
The curator is Prof. Shi-long Chen.