The fossils uncovered in canton Ticino are best viewed with a microscope
Ticino Natural History Museum
A Swiss research team has uncovered 242-million-year-old fossils on the Monte San Giorgio in canton Ticino. The scientists found seven fossil varieties which are fractions of a millimeter wide – less than half the width of a pin head.
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swissinfo.ch and agencies
As there are similarities between the newly discovered fossils and others found thousands of kilometres away, the tiny specimens are thought to be plankton from a network of ancient sea beds that may have extended as far as modern China.
On the other hand, based on the exceptional condition of the many fossils that have been found there, researchers believe the Monte San Giorgio’s ancient ocean basin was somewhat cut off from other bodies of water.
The team which made the latest fossil discovery comprises scientists from the Ticino Natural History Museum, Lausanne University and the Earth Surface Processes and Paleobiosphere programme, a research consortium from universities in French-speaking Switzerland.
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How a piece of Africa came to be in Ticino
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The mountain is regarded as the best place for studying fossil marine life from the mid-Triassic period and is believed to have once been part of Africa. It has been a Unesco World Heritage site since 2003. More than a thousand metres above sea level, Monte San Giorgio rises like a pyramid on the southern…
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The Monte San Giorgio, which is more than 1,000 metres above sea level, has become one of the world’s most important sites for studying fossils of the mid-Triassic period. It became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2003
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The cantonal environment office described it as “one of the most important finds at the site in the last 150 years”. The wingless insect, which has been given the Latin name Dasyleptus triassicus, measures about 15 millimetres in length. Palaeontologist Rudolf Stockar of the Ticino natural history museum told the Swiss News Agency that the…
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