A Gozitan resident and archaeology expert who found two prehistoric shark teeth in Victoria has described her efforts to report the findings as a “mind-numbing bureaucratic labyrinth”.
Spending hours going back and forth between different entities trying to report the findings and the possible destruction of other archaeological remains, Dawn Adrienne Saliba said she was informed that the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage only monitors archaeological, not paleontological, remains.
“How can that be? How can our millions-of-years-old past not be as valued and protected as our centuries-old past,” said the president of NGO Malta Arch who is doing post-doctoral work in archaeology.
“Is not a 16-million-year-old megalodon tooth just as worth preserving as 1,200-year-old pottery? It all should be preserved.”
In an opinion piece on Times of Malta today, Saliba said she discovered the ancient remains in ongoing roadworks close to her home in Triq Ta’ Viani and Triq Ġorġ Pisani, in Victoria. The roadworks are part of the controversial Marsalforn project to widen the arterial road and the development of another road to reroute traffic away from Victoria’s centre.
Worried that archaeological remains were being destroyed, Saliba investigated the site.
“As I walked among the scattered rocks, I found not one but two Caracharocles megalodon teeth,” she said.
“One was literally right below the wheel of the bulldozer. I also found scores of other fossil-containing rocks amidst the rubble.”
The Natural History Museum of Gozo verified the teeth, Saliba said.
The fossil once belonged to a megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark, and has been regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have lived. She said she also found two small man-made caves cut into the limestone, which she thought could be centuries old.
Saliba decided to file a report about the remains and to halt the works in progress but was unaware of the “soul-destroying and mind-numbing bureaucratic labyrinth” she was about to get herself into.
After filing a complaint with the heritage watchdog, she called the police, who informed her to call the local council.
The council told her they would read her complaint at the next meeting.
“I called the ministry, who told me to contact the Planning Authority. I emailed the Planning Authority’s enforcement unit who informed me that ‘roadworks do not fall under the remit of the Planning Authority’ and told me to contact Infrastructure Malta,” she said.
Infrastructure Malta told her to go back to the ministry.
“Beyond frustrated, I called the Planning Authority again. This time, they took down the information and told me they would launch an investigation. During those wasted five hours, the bulldozing continued, and millions of years of paleontological remains were obliterated in an instant.”
Questions have been sent to the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.