The "Balaena Montalionis"

Montaione sightseeing

In 1873 Carlo Major, an expert of the Geologic Museum of Florence, told to his friend the palaeontologist Giovanni Cappellini, about a discovery near Montaione of a fossil referable to the skull of a big cetacean.

The palaeontologist Giovanni Cappellini was person in charge to study the fossil and explain the results to the scientific community. He discover that it was a bone part of a skull of a big cetacean lived in the sea in Pliocene era belonging to the kind of Balaena, and since it had particular and different characteristics from the other cetacean discovered in Tuscany, he propose to call it with the name Balaena Montalionis.

Later, in the territory of Montaione has been discovered other fossils, from Castelfalfi comes a find exposed in the Civic Museum of Montaione, while other finds recently discoveredat Poggio Tagliato can be admired at the Science and Earth Department of Florence.

It was in the Pliocene Era (50 milions of years ago) the reopening of the Mediterranean Sea and the formation of the Strait of Gibraltar by connecting with the Atlantic Sea: in the sea at a higher level than today lived a kind of Cetaceans ancestor of the ones that today live in the cold Artic and Antartic regions.

Museo Civico
c/o Tourist Information Bureau
Via Cresci, 15
50050 MONTAIONE (Florence)
Tel. 0571 699 255