NIMRF was founded in 2003 as a vital part of the National Science and Technology Infrastructure (NSTI), which is directly governed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.

NIMRF offers more than 300 thousand state-owned specimens with scientific values, including minerals, rocks and fossils. As a data provider, it is our mission to advance the understanding of geo-resources and to provide services for academia, education and scientific popularization in the field of geoscience through collecting, organizing, and sharing specimen resources as well as attaching links to rock-mineral-fossil websites worldwide.