The Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology was one of the five original museums (Archaeology, Geology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology) that constituted the ROM at its founding in 1914. In 1950, the separate museums of Zoology and Palaeontology were combined into one. And in 1955, all of the previously separate museums became research divisions, within an amalgamated Royal Ontario Museum. On July 1, 1955, the division was officially renamed the Division of Zoology and Palaeontology. There was administrative significance to this change in designation. The ROM gained a single director of a unified museum, who reported to a museum board, with divisional departments having their own administrative hierarchies. Departmental organization included research divisions and a curatorial chain of command to oversee collections management - assistant curator, associate curator and curator.
The current Department of Invertebrate Zoology dates from 1977, under the larger divisional designation of Life Sciences. By 1995, approximately the period in which this fonds is completed, the department oversaw the collection, preservation, and management of over 1,000,000 specimens.
The main functions of the department, throughout its history, have been research and education, for the benefit of both the scholarly scientific community, as well as that of the general public. It was specifically to serve the function of public education that a new gallery was proposed in the mid-1980s, as part of the broader expansion of the ROM during this period. The proposed gallery was to have occupied 5,327 sq feet of the western half of the Terrace Galleries, Level 2. The proposal was known as "Living Invertebrates Gallery Development Project." It was originally planned to be completed in 8 stages by the early 1990s. Only Stages 1 - 3 of preliminary design were completed when the project was postponed in the fall of 1987. By February 1988 a one-year deferral of gallery plans had been decided upon, due to budget cuts and thus, lack of resources. By June 1988 artifacts acquired for the new gallery were packed and shipped to the Weston Road facility storage.