Monte San Giorgio
Monte San Giorgio is a mountain at Lake Lugano known for its marine fossils from the Mid Triassic Period. At that time (about 240 million years ago), the area had a tropical climate and a sea full of coral, fish, (long-necked) reptiles and turtle-like creatures. The fossils of these animals were found well preserved in what had been a sea basin.
When mines were dug at Monte San Giorgio in the 2nd half of the 19th century, to extract oil from butuminous shale, the fossils were discovered. Over 10.000 specimens have been found. They include large skeletons of vertrebrae up to 6 metres long. The quality of preservation is very high and a number of 'first discoveries' of species have been made here.
The site can be compared to
Ischigualasto / Talampaya (same period, but not marine) and
Dorset and East Devon Coast (partly same period, but not the same quality/quantity). Ideally, the site should be extended into Italy, as many important findings were discovered there. The fossils are displayed in museums in Zürich and Lugano, and in the local area (Meride, Besano, Induna Olona).
Visit June 2008
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As this is the first review of Monte San Giorgio at this website, and because it's not your run-of-the-mill tourist attraction either, I had to start from scratch in finding out how to 'visit' it. My conclusion after many hours of Googling is that there are two ways: by car 'from the back' or via a combination of boat and cable car 'from the front'. Visiting is a relative aspect here anyway - the IUCN reports of "boundaries (..that..) cannot be traced in the field". This site is all about fossils that have been taken away to museums a long time ago.
We went by boat from Lugano: 3 or 4 of the excursion boats that tour the lake daily have a scheduled stop at the town of Brusino, at the foot of Monte San Giorgio. It's a pleasant 45 minute trip, on which the real geo-collector also can tick off the Italian enclave of Campione d'Italia.
From Brusino there's a small cable car up the mountain to a panoramic terrace (close to the town of Serpiano). We enjoyed a good cappucino there, and then started walking. Several hikes are signposted from there. I had read about the 6 km long nature trail to Meride (which has a local fossil museum): interesting, but only doable for very experienced hikers. So we opted for the walk down to Meride via the main road. This turned out to be a good choice: it takes about 1h and 20 minutes, mostly through dense forest on a quiet and relatively flat road. The last part of the walk has lovely Alpine pastoral scenes (think cows with bells, stacked hay). And even industrial heritage: a small oilfactory that was instrumental in finding the fossils.
The town of Meride where we eventually arrived looked totally closed down for a long siesta: no restaurant or shop open for lunch. The door to the inner courtyard of the museum fortunately was open. And what a funny little museum this is! It consists of one class room size exhibition room, totally self service. No entrance fee, no staff. The room holds old photos of the scientific expeditions that uncovered the fossils and of course a couple of small and large fossils too. There's a TV where you can start an educating video to learn about how and where the fossils of Monte San Giorgio were unearthened. According to the visitors guestbook there is about one visiting party a day. I even found that quite a lot, measured against the remote location and low profile publicity of this site.
In all a worthwhile trip, very doable by public transport (we took the local bus back from Meride to Serpiano) and without any crowds.
More photos can be found in the Picture Gallery
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