Il Parco is housed in a former clay quarry, abandoned at the end of the 1970s. In this open-air deposit, covering about 12 hectares, various geological layers of marine origin are exposed, some of which are extraordinarily rich in fossils. Famous in the Italian and international scientific community for the abundance and preservation state of the finds, the quarry went through a period of abandonment and risked being lost during the 1980s, when it became an illegal waste dump. In the 1990s, the new owner company, Colacem of Gubbio, took care of its recovery by reclaiming its boundaries and bottom, planting as many as 8000 trees along the gently sloping edges. In February 1999, work began in the former quarry, becoming the Fossil Park, and in the seventeenth-century farmhouse (intended to be the Malacological Clay Museum) which lies on the property less than ten meters from the quarry edge. On the following August 9, the Malacological Clay Museum and the Lustrelle Quarry Fossil Park were officially born, one of the very few examples in Italy and Europe of environmental recovery for scientific-educational purposes of an abandoned quarry.
Information about the Malacological Clay Museum and Fossil Park
Contrada Lustrelle SS.Cutrofiano-Aradeo,
73020 Cutrofiano (Lecce)
3282855414
info@parcodeifossili.it
Source: MIBACT
