TILOS TRAVEL GUIDE

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MUSEUMS

This museum features some of the findings discovered in the cave at Harkadio of Tilos. It is the cave where professor of Geology and Paleontology of University of Athens, Mr. Nikolaos Symeonidis, discovered fossils of bones of dwarf elephants which had lived on the island for 50,000 years and became extinct 3,700 years ago.

In the small room of the exhibition one can see among other things two representations of dwarf elephants. The one represents an infant and the other an adult elephant. The bones of the representations come from different individual dwarf elephants of similar proportions, as no whole skeleton has yet been found, not even a complete skull or an intact spine. Bones of anthropological remains are also on exhibition, found in the cove of Saint Antonios of Tilos and dating from the Byzantine times. Examining those remains was the occasion on which Dr. Symeonidis visited the island in the first place and then discovered the dwarf elephants.