Leonardo da Vinci discovered the true nature of fossils using the Apennines as a laboratory.
This is the revolutionary and exciting discovery, the result of a study conducted by an international team of scientists led by:
Andrea Baucon (University of Genoa),
Fabrizio Felletti (State University of Milan),
Carlos Neto de Carvalho (Naturtejo Global Geopark/Istituto D. Luiz, Portugal)
and with the support of Girolamo Lo Russo (Natural History Museum of Piacenza).

“We discovered the place where paleontology was born – explained Baucon – and it was born in the Piacenza Apennines”.

This result was achieved by comparing the Leonardo da Vinci Codes with the fossil register of Piacenza. Baucon systematically studied Leonardo’s codices, discovering a forgotten passage from the Leicester Codex.

In this passage Leonardo describes curious shapes in stone, correctly interpreting them as icnofossils, that is, as fossilized traces of the movement of ancient animals. “It was an incredible emotion to discover that Leonardo had guessed the true nature of ichnofossils – said Baucon -: these are the most difficult fossils to understand, just think that until the first half of the 1900s scientists mistakenly interpreted them as algae”. In the Codex Leicester, Leonardo also intuited the organic nature of the so-called ‘petrified shells’, i.e. the fossil remains of ancient molluscs that Leonardo’s contemporaries saw as inorganic curiosities.

In the recently published study, the team of scientists describes a new paleontological site near the Chero stream: ‘Pierfrancesco’ rich in ichnofossils of vermiform organisms: it is located a short distance from Castell’Arquato, where there are fossil molluscs with perforations. “All five da Vinci constraints are satisfied – Baucon reiterated -: Leonardo has indicated an area between Parma and Piacenza, mountainous, rich in fossil molluscs, and with two different types of ichnofossils, namely drilling on shells and traces of vermiform organisms between the layers”