Section I: Geology and Palaeontology
| Room I - Geology |
The first three rooms of the museum are dedicated to the geology and palaeontology of the area and display lithological, fossil and osteological findings that belong to different geological periods of the history of Salento, systematically describing diverse natural environments, which were created by repeated changes in sea level and, in the most recent geological periods, by the great Pleistocenic glaciations.
The section begins with a small room created in 2007, entitled L’uomo e la pietra (Man and the Stone). In the room, a wealth of lithological findings introduces the visitor to the different knowledge stages of the geology of Salento and the fauna that populated its marine and costal environments from the Cretaceous to the Pliocene period. There are fossil remains of rudistes, biocostructing molluscs from the Late Cretaceous period when, under water, the Salento rock platform was taking shape (70-65 million years ago), consisting of remains of the coral reef that bordered the coast between Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca in the Palaeogene period (35 million years ago), of the big teeth of a huge shark, the Carcarodon megalodon, precursor of today’s great white shark, and of the Scaldicetus grandis, an ancestor species of today’s dolphins, which lived in a Miocene tropical sea, between 10 and 5 million years ago, and of the splendid specimens of the Cancer sismondai, crabs of large dimension, which, in the Pliocene period (5-2 million years ago), populated the cliffs between Otranto and Sant’Andrea (Melendugno).
The exhibition continues with the remains of the Pleistocene fauna (2 million-10 thousand years), first period of the Quaternary era, marked by significant millenary climate changes. Thus, the setting of the last Pleistocene period is re-enacted, the Riss- Würm (120-80 thousand years), during which, large forest areas and thickets, where bears, deer, wolves, moles, foxes and wild boar lived, alternated with humid and swampy environments with hippos and rhinos, as well as large stretches of grassland where lions, elephants and hyenas lived. Large herds of large Bovids, such as the Bos primigenius and horses also lived there, such as the Equus hydruntinus, a small size horse from the equidae family, whose very rare front leg, completely linked anatomically, is displayed at the museum, as well as the Equus caballus, precursor of today’s horse. Moreover, the remains of cold climate fauna, such as the Mammoth, the fallow deer, the woolly rhinoceros and the Alca impennis, a northern penguin which is now extinct, testify to the sudden climate temperature reduction of the last glacial period (Würm Glaciation, 80-10 thousand years) that transformed the Salento area in an arid broad grassy plain whipped by the icy North winds.
Bibliography:
M. A. Orlando, L'Uomo e la Pietra nel Salento Preistorico, in M. A. Orlando (a cura di), L'Uomo e la Pietra nel Salento Preistorico. Guida alla comprensione e alle escursioni sul territorio, pp. 11-22, Lecce, 2007.
P. Sansò, G. Selleri, Caratteri geologici della Penisola Salentina, in M. A. Orlando (a cura di), L'Uomo e la Pietra nel Salento Preistorico. Guida alla comprensione e alle escursioni sul territorio, pp. 23-27, Lecce, 2007.
