Geological Museum

Witness an impressive and fascinating collection of rare and beautiful exhibits that will give you a glimpse of the primitive time period and the evolution of life in the Geological Museum of Dhanbad, Jharkhand.

About the Museum

Established in 1926, the Geological Museum of Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) located in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, is one of the most visited places of attraction in the city and a place that will fascinate you with an astounding collection of rare exhibits. Housing a treasure chest of more than 12,000 exhibits and displays of typical and antique varieties of minerals, rocks, and fossils, models of earth processes, and progression of life, the Geological Museum of Dhanbad entertains visitors of all ages and professional backgrounds.

Other items of attraction are an exquisite assortment of gemstones in natural and polished forms, collections of fossils (age-wise, phylum-wise), of both plants and animals, rocks of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic groups, and minerals (element-wise, state-wise, genesis-wise – type/group-wise). Several physical features of rocks, namely folds, faults, joints, foliations together with diverse geomorphic models are also displayed in the museum. Many of these exhibits in the collection have been obtained by extensive efforts of the students and faculty members of the department and this makes the Geological Museum of Dhanbad special amongst the other geological museums in the country.

The collections in the museum are divided into three categories – Mineralogy-Economic Geology-Crystallography section, Petrology-Stratigraphy-Structural Geology section, and Paleontology-Geomorphology-Engineering Geology section. In the last 90 years, the museum has gathered quite an impressive assortment of exhibits and at present displays over 6000 specimens on its regular display and another 6000 articles as storage which are preserved and well-kept in their particular sections.