A Portuguese bulldozer driver has sparked controversy in his country by up putting a dinosaur fossil he found 10 years ago for sale on the Internet.
Gonsalo Ribeiro, who discovered the bones in western Portugal but would not reveal where exactly, decided it was time to earn some money from his treasure.
“For sale, dinosaur spine 90 percent intact,” reads his advertisement, posted in the antiquities section of a Web site.
“I own an excavation business, and one day when we were out digging, we came across some stones. But when I took a closer look, I noticed they were not stones,” said Ribeiro.
Ribeiro says that what he thought were stones are a “3.60-meter-long sauropod’s tail.”
The archaeological find was between 146 and 152 million years old and of “huge scientific value” according to paleontologist Octavio Mateus.
But Ribeiro has always refused to hand over his find to a museum, claiming, “the figures they offer are far off the mark.” He has already turned down an offer of 100,000 euros (NT$4,280,000).
An outraged Mateus, who works at a museum specializing in the Jurassic period in central-west Portugal, published a note on the Web site denouncing the “sale of our heritage as if it were a car or a pair of shoes.”
Mateus is calling for his government to introduce a law, like those of Argentina, China and Mongolia, making it illegal to sell on “public heritage.” (AFP)
葡萄牙一名推土機駕駛把他十年前發現的一塊恐龍化石放上網拍賣，結果在葡國引發爭議。
在葡萄牙西部發現這些骨骸、但不願透露確切地點的剛沙羅．芮貝羅認為，該是用這個珍寶來賺點錢的時候了。
他在某拍賣網古董區的廣告上寫道：「九成完好的恐龍脊椎，待售中。」
芮貝羅說：「我自己經營開鑿業，某天我們外出挖掘時，偶然發現了一些石塊。但等我仔細一看，發現它們不是石塊。」
芮貝羅表示，他誤以為是石塊的東西，其實是一條「三點六公尺長的蜥腳龍尾」。
古生物學者奧塔維歐．馬蒂斯表示，這個考古學上的發現可能有一億四千六百萬年至一億五千兩百萬年的歷史，極具「科學價值」。
但芮貝羅一直拒絕將他這個發現轉賣給博物館，他說：「他們開出的價碼低得離譜。」他已回絕一筆十萬歐元（新台幣四百二十八萬元）的開價。
任職於葡萄牙中西部某博物館、專研侏儸紀時期的馬蒂斯，憤怒地在網站上譴責這種「販售遺產好像在賣車或賣鞋」的行為。
馬蒂斯呼籲葡國政府效法阿根廷、中國和蒙古等國，立法禁止販售「公共遺產」。
（法新社�翻譯：袁星塵）
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