Museum of Natural History in Bulgaria’s Burgas Buys Out Rare Black Sea Coast Fossils with Donation
The Burgas Museum of Natural History has received a donation from three local Rotary Clubs in order to purchase rare fossils. Photo: Burgas Museum of Natural History
A one-time donation has helped the Museum of Natural History in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas to buy out rare fossil finds which had been auctioned off by their finder.
In early December 2015, the Museum issued a call for donations in order to be able to acquire rare fossils which had been discovered by an amateur paleontologist on the Black Sea coast, in the city’s Kraymorie Quarter.
The Burgas Museum of Natural History is part of the wider Burgas Regional Museum of History which also includes the Burgas Museum of Archaeology. It has no funding for the acquisition of fossils, bones, and other paleontological and/or archaeological items, which is why it resorted to the call for donations.
The sum of BGN 1,000 (app. EUR 510) need for the purchasing of the fossils has been donated by the three largest Rotary Clubs in the District of Burgas – Rotary Club Burgas, Rotary Club Pirgos, and Rotary Club Pomorie.
The fossils that the Burgas Museum of Natural History has now acquired are mussels from the Fimbria major species and a snail from the Campanile lachesis species.
The 30-million-year-old fossils, which were found in the rocks on the coast of the Black Sea Gulf of Burgas, have now been added to the Museum’s collection.
As of January 2016, the Burgas Museum of Natural History will open its new exhibition hall built specially for its collection of fossils.
In a statement, the Museum has reminded that this is the third donation made to it by the Rotary Clubs in the Burgas District. The previous two donations included funding for new windows and computers.
According to the Museum, the Kraymorie Quarter harbors huge deposits of fossils, and the entire Gulf of Burgas is said to be “a graveyard of prehistoric finds”.
This is not the first time the Burgas Museum has sought donations in order to acquire new finds.
Back in 2013, it paid BGN 1,000 for a rare 136-million-year-old ammonite found in the Gulf of Burgas, which was also auctioned off.
Back then, the sum was raised in less than a week by students from the Burgas Free University.
Because of a legislative gap, Bulgaria’s museums are left without funding for the purchase of paleontological and other finds that they would like to add to their collections.
