When Italy was an African's horn
Was "Avampaese Apulo" a horn of Africa? It is a theory of the paleogeography of the Mediterranean that has arisen precisely from the discovery of dinosaur footprints in Altamura and other footprints discovered in Puglia. A fascinating theory!
At least until 70-80 million years ago, Apulia, and with it much of south-central Italy, was a continental bridge to Africa, a 'horn' or peninsula, on which hundreds of dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period walked. Recent discoveries have turned Apulia into a dinosaur paradise with the discovery of as many as 30,000 footprints in Altamura (in the images), and dozens of footprints on the Gargano, in the province of Foggia, where in recent years fossils of the vegetation on which the large reptiles fed have also been found.
Unexpected discoveries that help reshape paleontological theories of what is now the Italian peninsula, where it was long believed that dinosaurs never existed.
With the discovery of Altamura, dating from a period 85-83 million years ago, the theory of a tropical environment, similar to the carbonate shoals of the Bahamas and the Maldives, with a much warmer climate, a lake landscape made up of many small islands joined by a mudflat, initially came to the fore. According to recent theories, the preservation of the dinosaurs's footprints was possible since they were muddy soils covered with microbial mucilage and algae that crystallized them, before they were covered by other layers of limestone. The special feature is the possibility of seeing in the Altamura footprints also the mud uplift created by the paw as the dinosaur laid it on the muddy bottom and then removed it.
Dozens of dinosaur footprints have subsequently come to light in the Gargano, dating to about 130 to 125 million years ago in the Lower Cretaceous. They are larger in size than those in Altamura, some as long as 40 centimeters, and belong to large bipedal dinosaurs, with tridactyl footprints, both carnivorous and herbivorous, and to herbivorous quadruped dinosaurs. In 2004, fossils of flora and vegetation from the Upper Cretaceous (80 million years old) were discovered in rocks at Apricena (Foggia), believed to be the actual meal of large reptiles, and footprints were also discovered at Mattinata and Peschici, embedded in marine rocks used to create ballasts on harbors.
The discovery that dinosaurs on the Gargano walked as early as 50 million before those in Altamura has imparted a twist to the paleogeographical theories of the Mediterranean, dispelling the idea of a carbonate shoal similar to the Bahamas archipelago but making way for the real idea that Apulia was a continental bridge from Africa. This conclusion is arrived at by the simple observation that dinosaurs, and those in Gargano are larger in size than those in Altamura, needed even more massive amounts of vegetation to feed themselves thus assuming the existence of a more stable, larger territory, thus connected to Africa in the then Tethys Sea.
From a geological point of view, the peninsula hypothesis is more credible than the previous ones
explains Professor Alfonso Bosellini, of the University of Ferrara
Apulia was part of a peninsula attached to Africa, a peninsula like Florida, which reached as far as Majella, also included the Greek islands and the Peloponnese until it encompassed all of central and southern Italy. This is evident when you think that so many dinosaurs could not live in a small island like the Maldives or the Bahamas, there is not enough to eat, the ecological niche is much narrower. Dinosaurs needed forests, mountains, water sources and enough land for migration
The discoveries in Altamura, with by far the largest concentration of footprints, and on the Gargano have enriched the sampling of Italian dinosaurs that until the beginning of the century were thought to be completely absent as land animals, while Italy is a peninsula made up of rocks of marine origin.
The Apulian discoveries are the latest among the most interesting discoveries about dinosaurs in our peninsula, which inevitably include that of Cyrus, the "scipionyx samniticus" found at Pietraroja in the Benevento area, a dwarf species 50 centimeters long and weighing 500 grams, an ancient velociraptor, whose liver and intestines were also left intact in the rock.
The Altamura discovery, moreover, made those in Rovereto, Trentino, and Lerici, La Spezia, pale in comparison with the thousands found on the Bari Murgia, where the footprints discovered are only a few dozen.
