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Monte San Giorgio
| Site number: | 1090 |
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| Type of site: | Natural | |
| Date: | - | |
| Date of Inscription: | 2003 | |
| Location: | Europe, Switzerland, Canton of Ticino | |
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| Description: | Monte San Giorgio is a pyramid-shaped, wooded mountain reaching 1,096 m above sea level above Canton Ticino, south of Lake Lugano. It is deemed the finest fossil record of marine life from the Triassic Period of 245–230 million years ago. Life within a tropical lagoon environment, secluded and in part separated from the open sea by an offshore reef is chronicled in the series. The circumstances allowed diverse marine life to thrive within this lagoon, consisting of reptiles, fish, bivalves, ammonites, echinoderms and crustaceans. Since the lagoon was located close to land, some land-based fossils are filtered in among the other fossil remains, including reptiles, insects and plants. The outcome is a fossil reserve of great wealth. --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. | |
| Monte San Giorgio is a wooded mountain (1,096 m above sea level) located in the south of canton Ticino in Switzerland. Monte San Giorgio became a UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2003, because it "is the single best known record of marine life in the Triassic period, and records important remains of life on land as well." --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. | ||
| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1090 | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Site Page. | |