OVER €3 million worth of dinosaur relics are being offered to the state by Angelos Tsirides, a well-travelled private collector and owner of Tsircon Co, on the condition that the state builds a museum to house them.
Tsirides said he wished to put Cyprus on the map by donating around 600 artefacts to a future museum, including the complete skeletons of dinosaurs, such as the Protocetus and the Oviraptor, as well as several dinosaur heads, including the hefty 1.60m head of a Triceratops.
Some of the heads also come from what he describes as “beasts of the sea” such as a Plesiosaurus, dating back to the Jurassic period, which according to Tsirides is what is believed to be the Loch Ness monster.
One of the more important pieces of the dinosaur collection is the Anchiornis, whose name means “near bird” and is considered momentous by scientists in filling the gap in the transition between the body structures of avian birds and non-avian dinosaurs. This specific species of dinosaur is 150 million years old.
The collection also includes minerals, semi-precious stones and fossils, the oldest items being the three to four billion-year-old stromatolites, which are single cell organisms and are in fact considered to be the Earth’s oldest fossils.
The extraordinary artefacts will only be handed over though once the museum has been built as Tsirides feels strongly about them not simply sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
“Whatever I find I will use to enrich the collection, but they will be of high quality and rare items,” said Tsirides.
Tsirides also wants to have an active role in the proposed museum. A meeting did take place yesterday to discuss what will be done about it. “It may take up to two years for it to be complete,” said Tsirides.
However, the process is a long an arduous one as many things must be considered such as a location, as well as studies to be done by professionals, for instance palaeontologists, and also fixtures must be chosen to house the bones and fossils. On a more positive note, once the location is chosen the progression of the project will be a lot faster, he said.
Tsirides also owns a shop called “Prehistoric Treasures” that sells ordinary collector’s pieces.
