The freezers - which are capable of storing samples at -86 degrees Celsius – cost $16,000 each.
The Museum’s Tissue Collection Manager Sally South (pictured above with one of the freezers) said the museum had 13 ultra freezers, and the new ones are replacing two of the six eldest, which are about 20 years old.
“The Museum was one of the first institutions in the world to begin storing tissue samples in the mid-1970s,” she said.
“It was an innovative and forward-thinking move, that is now critical with the growth in DNA technology.”
The Museum’s tissue collection is valued at more than $8 million, based on replacement costs.
Some samples, of course, can’t be replaced because they came from now extinct animals.
“We have about 150,000 samples stored in the 13 freezers,” Miss South said.
“They keep the tissue samples safe until we need to do any analysis - DNA degrades very quickly.”
Each of the Thermo Fisher Scientific freezers weigh almost half a tonne and are about 2m tall.
It was a delicate operation moving them into the Science Centre’s basement storage facility.
All the Museum’s freezers are set at an economical -70 degrees Celsius and are alarmed to alert staff if temperatures begin to climb.
The Museum also has a back-up generator in case of power failures.
