Charles Zidar

Charles Zidar is the Director and Board President of the Museum or Archaeology, Paleontology
and Science, Inc. (MAPS). He shares his time with the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Tampa. He is also an Adjunct Instructor in the Humanities at Pasco Hernando State College and the Chairman of the Board for the Cultural Affairs Advisory Council of Pasco County. He worked for the Living History Museum at the Florida State Fairgrounds. He worked as the Assistant Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Gainesville, Florida. He also worked for the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri and for North Carolina State
Parks in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has degrees in Landscape Architecture from the Ohio State
University, Columbus, Ohio (1991) and in Liberal Studies from the University of Oklahoma,
Norman, Oklahoma (2006) where he studied plant use of the ancient Maya with a focus on plants
in the Bombacaceae (Malvaceae) family. His thesis: Sacred Giants: Ethnobotany of the
Bombacaceae by the Southern Lowland Maya was the impetus behind the creation of the
botanical center of research on the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies,
Inc. (FAMSI) website. This work was featured on the cover of Economic Botany in the article
Sacred Giants: Depiction of the Malvaceae Subfamily Bombacoideae on Maya Ceramics in
Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize (Volume 63, Number 2, 3 April 2009), a work co-authored by
Wayne Elisens at the University of Oklahoma. This work was featured on headline news for the
BBC World News (Earth News, 5 June 2009). He is currently completing papers for the Journal
of Ethnobiology with Richard Stepp at the University of Florida. He originally began his
archaeological work on Greek and Roman sites in Greece and Cyprus. For the last decade he has
worked in natural history museums completing work in Central and South America. He is
completing manuscripts on water lilies, squash vessels, plants depicted on ear spools and plants
and animals depicted on ancient Maya headdresses. He is completing his PhD at Leiden
University (in the Netherlands). While working for museums in Florida and North Carolina, he
has excavated dinosaurs from the Cretaceous through the Triassic, discovering new species
unknown to science. He has traveled to over 45 countries consulting on museum projects and
completing science-based research. He works with LanternFest Creative (LFC), creating
animatronic dinosaur shows (and other events) around the world, recently completing large
projects in the US, Dubai, and Singapore. He lives with his family in Tarpon Springs, Florida.