Why does one select Scala type members with a hash instead of a dot?

In Scala, the syntax for selecting a type from a class is different from that of selecting anything else from a class. In that the former uses a hash as the selection operator instead of a dot. Why is that?

Example: If we have a class like so...

class Example {
    type Foo = String
}

Why do we select the type from the class like this...

val example:Example#Foo = "1"

instead of like this?

val example:Example.Foo = "1"