A KEICHOSAURUS FOSSIL

Length: 24cm Width: 16cm

Provenance: Acquired from China in 1991 by Robert Hudson.

The Museum of Curios, Cornwall, On display in from 1999 until the museum closed in 2004.

The Museum of Curios collection was started in the 1930’s by Dr Palmer Ph.D. of Gloucester. Phillip Henry Douglas Palmer collected bizarre and wonderful artefacts all his life. He worked as an administrator for the National Health Service where he came into contact with many retired doctors and physicians. These encounters led him to amass a huge collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century anatomical models and curios from all over the world. Over the years he sold, swapped and dealt to collectors all over Europe increasing an already huge private collection of 2047 artefacts, which was housed in his small office at home in Downderry, Cornwall. Dr Palmer met Mr Robert Hudson in the early 1990's through his daughter Alison, and together they combined their collections and set up the Bizarre and Weird Museum in Newquay, Cornwall, which was to eventually hold some 4000 rare and unusual artefacts which were rotated for display. In 2006 the museum building was sold but a small number of artefacts remained in the collection, including this fossil.

Keichousaurus is a genus of marine reptile in the pachypleurosaur family which went extinct at the close of the Triassic (251–199.6 million years ago) in the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event. The name derives from Kweichow, China where the first fossil specimen was discovered in 1957.