More than 1,700 animal and plant specimens from the collection of eminent British geologist Sir Charles Lyell—known as the pioneer of modern geology—were organised, digitised and made openly accessible via the NHM Data Portal in a pilot project, led by Dr. Consuelo Sendino, curator at the Department of Earth Sciences (Natural History Museum, London). They are described in a data paper published in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.