Paleontology 2.0 - Public awareness of paleontological sites thorough new technologies

Paleontology 2.0 is a new way to communicate Paleontology by the means of new technologies to communicate, disseminate and enhance the territory of ancient man: prehistoric habitat where man, fauna and flora were living a full sharing of the site. The territory of ancient man is now made up by prehistoric "invisible" sites, “visible” sites and museums. Prehistoric "invisible" sites are places where there are ruins and remains of fauna and flora which, due to the particular type of site, after being object of a campaign of excavation, are now covered and thus made invisible. Prehistoric "visible" sites are those that, after an initial phase of the study, were subjected to a process of a musealization, where the artifacts are set back in the same place where they were found. Traditional museums collect specimens in collections and are not always located in the area of the discovery. For each of these cases, the new technologies provide different tools for knowledge. APP are effective on

Paleontology 2.0 is a new way to communicate Paleontology by the means of new technologies to communicate, disseminate and enhance the territory of ancient man: prehistoric habitat where man, fauna and flora were living a full sharing of the site. The territory of ancient man is now made up by prehistoric "invisible" sites, “visible” sites and museums. Prehistoric "invisible" sites are places where there are ruins and remains of fauna and flora which, due to the particular type of site, after being object of a campaign of excavation, are now covered and thus made invisible. Prehistoric "visible" sites are those that, after an initial phase of the study, were subjected to a process of a musealization, where the artifacts are set back in the same place where they were found. Traditional museums collect specimens in collections and are not always located in the area of the discovery. For each of these cases, the new technologies provide different tools for knowledge. APP are effective on prehistoric "invisible" sites and let you have a memory or "track" of what was experienced on land. APP are tools that, working with a virtual dimension, are able to give an image to the "invisibility" of the field, where there is no evidence of a paleontological existence. Prehistoric "visible" sites allow you to make an interesting series of operations from the acquisition with 3D laser scanner, to interactive forms of knowledge of the finds, to 3D reconstruction of the habitat with the original flora and fauna of the past (3D modeling with the possibility of visualization and navigation in real time). Museums allow you to use all the above procedures by integrating informations of a scientific nature with views that can make accessible to a wider audience data and specimens collected. In the proposed case of study, new technologies are applied to Polledrara of Cecanibbio, a field of elephant fossils of 320,000 years ago. The actions for the communication/disclosure are: - Scan with 3D laser scanner to obtain a virtual reconstruction of the paleontological site; the model becomes the basis on which formulate different ways to display and to use the site and its artifacts; - Creation of interactive installations that allow knowledge to a "participatory" action of the site; - Creation of an APP to communicate and disclosure, at a distance, the history of the site and the value and consistency of its findings.