Tue, Oct 14, 2014 page4

• FEATURE: Dentist doubles as fossil museum owner

  • By Yu Chao-fu and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  A dentist deeply fascinated with fossils said he became hooked on collecting rocks containing ancient lifeforms after buying 10 fossilized swallows at a night market two decades ago.

  For Hsu Wei-chieh (許威傑), a dentist in Keelung, the NT$200 purchase led to him procuring shelves of books on the topic and returning to study, enrolling in geology courses at National Taiwan University.

  According to Hsu, he was hooked on fossils the moment he learned that the rocks he had bought at the night market showed the imprint of creatures that were alive hundreds of millions of years ago.

  

  Dentist Hsu Wei-chieh poses by a display case on Sept 17 in the Darwin Fossil Museum, the museum he opened next to his clinic in Keelung to display his collection of fossils.

  Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times

  “It was really curiosity,” Hsu said, adding that ever since then he has found himself increasingly drawn to the subject.

  While every collector of fossils has their own particular area of interest, some preferring a particular color, while others are drawn to a particular grain or texture, Hsu’s focus is the historical background of fossils.

  “The greatest thing I have learned from the collection over these many years is that I can tell a story for each stone,” Hsu said, adding that he now knows enough about fossils and geology to be able to make some audacious predictions about evolutionary processes.

  Hsu and his wife, Teng Kuei (鄧桂), own a dental clinic on Siding Road in Keelung, and while there are parts of Hsu’s collection on display in the clinic, the majority of the collection is displayed in a museum next to the clinic, named the Darwin Fossil Museum.

  Pointing to the museum, which he has been running for nearly five years, Hsu said that the fossils are arranged chronologically, with the second floor displaying cyanobacteria in stromatolite fossils — dating back to the period when life began to emerge — and fossils from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic periods.

  His most well-known fossils, including of trilobites and the ammonitida, are on the second floor, Hsu said. The third floor mainly exhibits fossil wood, ferns and dinosaur fossils, Hsu said, adding that the fourth floor was reserved for larger and rarer pieces. The fifth floor is a multimedia classroom where films can be shown, Hsu said.

  The museum is entirely free, Hsu said.

  Hsu said that he had invited the Keelung City mayor and the head of the department of cultural affairs to visit, but he had not received a reply.

  Aside from students from a community college and some members of the public, the museum has not received many visitors in the past five years, Hsu said.

  Hsu said that there were offers from central and southern Taiwan to set up exhibits in the areas, but he had decided to give up on such ideas.

  “There are reasons I have established the museum in Keelung,” Hsu said, adding that not only was it his hometown, but also the place he works.

  In an effort to boost the number of visitors and help promote an interest in fossils, Hsu paid to publish an album on the museum and commissioned a book: Fossils: A Narration of History (化石話古).
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