The public exhibits at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. are only a small fraction of the museum's entire collection.
The real collection — the 126 million specimens ranging from rare butterflies to whale skulls to ancient, handmade purses — live in the museum's various collections rooms.
And the room that contains the most history of all, the Paleobiology Collections, comprises "the history of life on our planet over the last 2.5 billion years,"according to the musuem.
There are more than 1,500 dinosaur specimens (like bones and teeth) and 40 million fossils, plants, single-celled organisms, and sediment types in the room.
The museum has been cataloguing its specimens for 150 years, many of which also live in the various online databases set up by the curators.
"Museum visitors sometimes wonder aloud whether we need to keep adding 'stuff' to the NMNH collections," the museum states on its website. "In fact, we have literally only skimmed the surface when it comes to understanding the natural world and humanity's place in it."
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This is how big dinosaurs actually were in real life