The legend of the devil's hooves
Certainly to many inhabitants of the shores of the Lario happened, sometimes, to be in front of a fossil that aroused their curiosity and perhaps even a kind of perplexity.
The places where you are most likely to come across a fossil are the Triassic limestones of the South Tyrolean dolomites and the Lombardy Prealps, which we present at the Moat of Nava at the municipality of Griante, at the Sasso degli Stampi ("Praa della Taca") in Tremezzo (hamlet of Bonzanigo) or at the Musso Stone. These are. impressions of bivalve shells of genders Conchodon o Megalodon (two-valved shells such as oysters, clams or mussels) that stand out on the rock surface in cross-section taking on a strange "heart" shape. These curious signs, likened to "notches" carved in the rock, Were exchanged by the shepherds For footprints of horse herds or, according to others, signs of the demon's passage from the "horse's hoof-like paw."
In the meadows of the Moat of Nava, where the following are found numerous megalodont fossils, one finds the "Wheel Hole", a vertical cave that descends 100 m into the bowels of the mountain. The presence of the cave and the Fossils with a curious "horse's hoof" shape have sparked the most fanciful theories of local residents. Legend tells of a volcano which triggered an apocalyptic eruption, exhausted, leaving a deep chasm (Wheel Hole). The immense event caused the flight of herds of horses and even the devil, whose footprints remained imprinted in the still hot and malleable rock. In support of this thesis, the presence of lava rocks, erupted from the volcano in several reddish-colored blocks, was hypothesized. Today we know that these blocks are Erratic boulders carried by an ancient glacier And deposited in the vicinity of Tremezzo-Griante.
A variation of the Legend tells of the arrival of an ark of Noah. from which numerous animals would have descended, which would have left imprints on the muddy (now consolidated) ground. These false tracks are actually numerous Hollows due to water erosion eroding limestone rocks originating variable shapes. They have been interpreted by the same imagination as the footprints of bears, chickens and other animals. The cauldron of legends also finds room for the image of the sacred, in fact reduced specimens of Megalodon observed in the vicinity of St. Martin's Church were attributed to the "footsteps of Our Lady."
Megalodons (Megalodon gümbeli) and the Conchodon constitute Two fossil guide of rock formations dating from the upper Triassice (Noricum-terminal part of the Rhaetian), about 200 million years ago. These formations, described by the distinguished geologist Antonio Stoppani between 1858 and 1881, were named Main Dolomia a Megalodon gümbeli and Dolomia a Conchodon infraliasicus, after the two most abundant lamellibranchs. I shellfish described, That could reach up to 20 cm in length, lived on the bottom of hypersaline lagoons located at marine platforms. The climate, very different from the current, it must have been very hot, probably the general conditions were similar to those in today's tropics.
The ball of legends began to fade in the mid-1900s: the improvement and increase in educational facilities, the means of communication available to all, and the ultimate establishment of a modern and flourishing paleontology allowed the circulation of the fossil concept even in the "remote" Larian valleys. The chance discovery of petrified shells in some Lario and Ceresio villages was explained according to natural laws. People "questioned" about the nature of these strange geological phenomena answered: "is a petrified shell, in fact everything here was once covered by the sea!" This simple statement encapsulates a Enormous change in scientific thinking: the idea that the Earth presented a different appearance than it does today and that this environment has partially changed over time.
Scientists had been taught to consider the Bible (which affirmed the stability of the earth) only from a religious perspective and not from a scientific one. It should be pointed out that if we analyze in detail the statement "everything here was once covered by the sea!" we still find some Misinterpretations with respect to modern understandings of geology; in fact, even today, many people are convinced that the sea covered the territory as it is in its present state. For example, remaining locally, seawater would have occupied the territories of the Western Lario, leaving (according to many) the higher mountains to emerge. This would thus be a strong marine invasion that persisted for a long time, a time so long as to leave traces of petrified marine organisms.
This interpretation leads back to the theories of Ristoro d'Arezzo (1282) who found the universal flood to be the cause of the presence of marine fossils in the mountains. In later times (1517) Girolamo Fracastoro correctly argued that a marine invasion such as the diluvial one, being a time-limited episode, would leave the remains of animals only on the surface of the mountains and not (as is really the case!) within them.
In fact, today we know that both the mountains and our territory in general, are splits of sediment that accumulated on the seafloor and then rose up as a result of the movement of continents and the opening of new ocean basins. We daily traverse what remains of a portentous accumulation of sediments that were once at the bottom of an ocean basin; the collision 100 million years ago between the European Plate and the African Plate lifted all this material, creating the Pre-Alps and thus also our territory. It is not sea water that has invaded the territory but, on the contrary, the Pre-Alps, once a muddy seabed, have been uplifted giving rise to the morphology, topography and relief of the Western Lario.
