The early studies on the Eocene Bolca Fossil-Lagerstätte (Italy). An historical overview

The Eocene Bolca Fossil-Lagerstätte represents one of the best known and most important fossil sites of the Cenozoic Era. Vertebrate, invertebrate and plant fossil remains from Bolca, characterized by an extraordinary completeness, diversity and conservation, can in fact be considered as true icons of Italian paleontology, with specimens that, over the years, have embellished a number of European and North American collections. In addition to the great paleontological and scientific significance of the sites in general, representing a unique example of an ancient biodiversity hotspot approaching the origin of modern reefal ecosystems, fossils from Bolca have been described, figured and discussed for over four centuries, proving of great importance also for the history of paleontology and geology. In this paper we report a historical review of the first contributions by Italian scientists to the knowledge of the fossil sites of the Bolca area, in a period between the sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth century. This period was characterized by cogent debates in the emerging field of Earth Sciences, which find a clear reflection and influence also in the works dedicated to the fossils of Bolca. Although the hypotheses proposed by various scholars to explain the origin of the fossil fish deposits are often in contrast to each other, as in many other cases, several Italian authors that dealt with the Bolca Lagerstätte showed the ability to propose seminal concepts for the Earth Sciences, starting invariably from empiric data collected in the field.