This time we stay within the borders of Campania, even if Pietraroja (BN) is a stone's throw from Molise. To get to Pietraroja we pass through Cusano Mutri and Cerreto Sannita, two beautiful places to which we will dedicate a few posts in the future. We went to this mountain village to see something unique that is only here, let's say for a hundred million years! It is Ciro, the baby dinosaur Scipionyx Samniticus found in 1979, which owes its high-sounding scientific name to the naturalist Scipione Breislak; this gentleman at the end of the 1700s had guessed the presence of fossils of marine organisms in the Pietraroja area and on the basis of his intuition, between the 1800s and 1900s excavations were conducted that led to the discovery of Ciro. This is an area that 110 million years ago was a real tropical lagoon, at the bottom of which the little dinosaur drowned, being covered over time by limestone mud that transformed it at the end of a process that lasted millions of years. in fossil. The importance of this find lies in the fact that it is the first dinosaur fossil found in Italy and which still has parts of internal organs that are still clearly visible. This is why it was right to build a real scientific-educational museum around Ciro, inaugurated in 2005. We are talking about the PaleoLab (*), a structure that, in addition to collecting various fossils of animals and plants, is equipped with numerous equipment such as panels, models, projection room and an educational laboratory, designed specifically for use by schoolchildren. For information refer to the website http://www.comune.pietraroja.bn.it/images/stories/Paleolab.pdf
And here is the real Ciro (nickname that underlines his Campania origin) and below a life-size reconstruction (about 20 cm):
Here is a reconstruction of the 110-million-year-old brackish lagoon:
and here we see the geological elevator, a set of screens in which explanatory films are projected that allow, with appropriate off-screen commentary, to retrace the geological eras in a few minutes:
Here are other fossils:
and some didactic panels:
For lunch we can suggest a restaurant with our accessibility requirements: La Vecchia Quercia (*): Via Cerquelle 28, Cerreto Sannita +39 0824 861263 https://m.facebook.com/ristlavecchiaquercia/?locale2=it_IT (*) symbol indicating the presence of toilets equipped for the disabled