National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) on Friday opened its on-campus natural history museum after three years of collecting artifacts, which include fossils from several hundred million years ago.
The NCHU Department of Life Sciences said it gathered animal and plant artifacts from the school’s other departments and teachers, some of which had been in teachers’ collections for more than 60 years, to establish the museum.
The collection includes items of scientific importance akin to those found in national museums, it said.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
They include Taiwan’s second-largest giant squid specimen, other ancient fossils and the tusks of Asian elephant Malan, which died of old age at the Taipei Zoo in 2002, it said.
The Taichung-based school said it is to open the museum to visitors by appointment, adding that the museum’s mission also includes promoting ecological conservation.
The department was founded in 1956 when the school’s botany and animal science departments merged.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
“The researchers in those departments had already been accumulating all kinds of plant seeds, vertebrate and invertebrate specimens for their research,” Department of Life Sciences dean Chen Chuan-mu (陳全木) said. “The school had an herbarium, but it was mostly used for storage, and not put to its full potential for research.”
When the life sciences department began work on the museum three years ago, it received solid support from the school’s administration, as well as from Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲), he said.
The department also received help from accomplished researchers, he said, citing the collection’s 195-million-year-old dinosaur embryo fossil, which was donated by international researcher Timothy Huang (黃大一).
Huang discovered the fossil in China’s Yunnan Province in 2003 and later worked with University of Toronto paleontologist Robert Reisz, who led a team to conduct further research in the area.
The collection also includes fossils from the ediacaran period 542 million to 635 million years ago, a 4m crocodile skin and the world’s longest marine invertebrate, he said
“We also have the skeleton of a pilot whale and the remains of an Asian giant softshell turtle that died in Taichung’s Fengle Park (豐樂公園) in 2020. The turtle is a class-2 protected species,” he said.
EVA Airways today confirmed the death of a flight attendant on Saturday upon their return to Taiwan and said an internal investigation has been launched, as criticism mounted over a social media post accusing the airline of failing to offer sufficient employee protections. According to the post, the flight attendant complained of feeling sick on board a flight, but was unable to take sick leave or access medical care. The crew member allegedly did not receive assistance from the chief purser, who failed to heed their requests for medical attention or call an ambulance once the flight landed, the post said. As sick
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
The Taichung District Court yesterday confirmed its final ruling that the marriage between teenage heir Lai (賴) and a man surnamed Hsia (夏) was legally invalid, preventing Hsia from inheriting Lai’s NT$500 million (US$16.37 million) estate. The court confirmed that Hsia chose not to appeal the civil judgement after the court handed down its ruling in June, making the decision final. In the June ruling, the court said that Lai, 18, and Hsia, 26, showed “no mutual admiration before the marriage” and that their interactions were “distant and unfamiliar.” The judge concluded that the couple lacked the “true intention of
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
RSS