Scientific notions lie outside the topics of a tourists guide. But it's interesting to know that millions of years ago a hot tropical sun shone in the Brembana Valley and the fossils that have been studied by scientists show the succession of different geological eras. Even the curiosity of the tourist is satisfied when he discovers among the rocks a fossil. Everything begun 20 millions of years ago when
the Mediterranean sea was much more wider than today and was joined to the Atlantic ocean and the Indian one. Italy did not exist and Europe and Africa were smaller than today. Europe consisted only of the plains of European Russia, Poland, Germany and France.
Then Africa started to slide towards Europe and this movement created the Pyrenees ranges, the Alps and the Balkans. The Appennines rose from the waters of the ancient Mediterranean sea some millions of years later. The slide of the continent narrowed the Mediterranean sea that bacame a big dry lake. Only a few millions of years ago, it was opened a crack in Gibraltar and the waters of the Atlantic ocean filled the Mediterranean sea giving it the look it has got today. Eventually 20 000 years ago the collapse of the Strait of Bosphorus joined the Mediterranean sea to the Black sea.
The cold and fresh waters of the north of Russia through the Black sea and Aegean flowed into the Mediterranean lowering its temperature and its salinity. In this way the sea took on the geographical and climatic conformation it has today and became a suitable environment to the most evolved prehistoric man- HOMO SAPIENS- from which, through well-know prehistoric and historic events, the human being has developed. It's difficult to guess the aspect of the earth before the man appeared. Such far-off eras seem almost unthinkable to the human mind. But those incredible transformations really happened and some proofs of these evolutions were found even in the Brembana Valley in particular, from 1976, in the land of Zogno.
Here were discovered lots of fossils: fishes, reptiles and plants of about 220 millions of years (upper Triassic). When these creatures died they fell on the bottom of the ancient Mediterranean sea. During the millenniums those stratums petrified thanks to particular chemical that were in the water. When 50 millions of years ago the Alps born, the bottom of the sea containing these fossils was lifted. The action of glaciers, rivers and rain scratched the surface of those stratums showing the prints of the petrified organisms. In ancient eras in the Brembana Valley there was a very deep sea, rather warm and salted, with coastlines and green woods really alike to those ones you can find near the coral cliffs in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Because the sedimentation process lasted millions of years it produced very thick stratums of organic sediments.
Those ancient stratums form particular areas of the Brembana Valley an the Imagna Valley. This is why in the Orobic Prealpes and in the Brembana Valley you can discover fossils of different shells, coquinas, gastropods of every size, little corals, sea urchins and other invertebrates. You can also discover big and very nice ones (even 80 cm) in the mountains near Piani of Scalvino near by the village of Lenna. We hope that all those fossils could be gathered in a museum and soon new researches could began in order to find other interesting and scientific proofs of the past of our Valley.
BREMBANA VALLEY SKI
WEBCAM OROBIE ALPS
ACCOMMODATION
Environment in Brembana Valley