The area of the Cima Rest plateau, given its scientific importance, was herborized and investigated in its geological aspects beginning in the mid-19th century. No less impressive are its natural resources consisting of forests covering all the slopes.
The Cima Rest fossil deposit and the Paralepidotus ornatus from Malga Alvezza In 1969, a surface
fossil deposit of some scientific importance was discovered by researchers from the Brescia Civic Museum of Natural Sciences at Cima Rest, in the Alvezza locality, near the alpine pasture, part of a geologic formation, called the
Zorzino Limestone, of
Mesozoic age, dating from approximately 220 million years ago. The fossil fauna investigated consists of shrimp and fish that lived in ancient
Mesozoic seas. Special features of these fossils are their preservation with their complete morphology highlighting anatomical details. Prominent among the various findings is the discovery in sediments of the
Norian age of a
Paralepidotus ornatus, a fossil fish specimen 600 millimeters long now preserved at the
Brescia Civic Museum of Natural Sciences and dating precisely to the
Norian stage, i.e., the
Triassic period between 226 and 210 million years ago. Paralepidotus was a slow-moving fish, equipped with strong ganoid scales to defend itself from attackers equipped with teeth, lived near the seabed and fed mainly on mollusks. Researcher Fulvio Schiavone writes: "The first to be discovered in the late 1960s were holostean fishes belonging to the genera
Paralepidotus and
Pholidophorus, but later remains of flying fishes and single teeth detached from the jaws of predatory fishes, such as the genus
Birgeria, were also identified. Also common are the jaws of
Pseudodalatias, a cartilaginous fish, of which only the small jaw equipped with pointed teeth is known because it is bony in nature. Shrimps of the genera
Antrimpos, Archeopalinurus, Acanthinopus and (Palaeo)dusa have also been found. Of interest are the
Thylacocephala, arthropods recently discovered taxonomically in the
Besano fossiliferous deposit, which lived undisturbed in the asphyxial seabed feeding on the remains of dead animals that had fallen down into the seabed. Among other novelties, problematic remains were also found that may correspond to the wing of a flying reptile of the
Triassic and
Jurassic rhamphorhynchus group." In fact, the presence of these fossils had already been detected in the last decades of the 1800s by the German geologist
Karl Richard Lepsius. In the second half of the 19th century the
Austrian Empire planned and financed within the Geologische Reichanstalt geological studies and research in southern
Tyrol and Trentino in parallel with topographical surveys and the first cadastral maps. Between 1875 and 1878
Karl Richard Lepsius carried out careful stratographic research, devoting several pages of his book to the geology of the Ledro Alps and the mountains south of Ampola with detailed studies of the upper dolomite of Alpo di
Bondone, Valle Lorina, Val Vestino, and
Monte Caplone. In his publication "Western South Tyrol," published in Berlin in 1878, Lepsius wrote: "The greater part of the Vestino Valley consists of main
dolomites, the wild gorges of which are difficult to penetrate; on it lie the
Rhaetian strata, severely faulted and pierced by the rigid
dolomites. The irregular formation makes it difficult always to separate the lilodendron
limestone and
dolomite from the underlying main dolomite; for the contorta-mergel are mostly discarded and crushed, and carried away by water on the dolomites. The broad plateau above
Magasa, on which fresh green meadows and shrubs extend, we immediately recognize as
Rhaetian in contrast to the rugged and almost completely barren dolomites: numerous blocks of lilodendrons,
Terebratula gregaria, Aviceln, and Modiole immediately confirm our hypothesis; next to that, contorta-thone clays have been wrested from the water, in which we find the same Avicula contorta, Cyrena rhaetica,
Cerithium hemes, Leda percaudata, Austrian Cardita and others. Large quantities of fossils characteristic of these strata have been found. The strata descend from
Caplone Pass to the south; the lilodendron limestones collapsed on the lower clays and were thrown south on the main dolomites. Houses on the upper meadows are built with black lilodendron limestone. Toward the settlement of
Magasa one descends on lilodendron limestone, an alternation of gray and black limestone, gray dolomite limestone, and white dolomite limestone. Below it lies, not very thick, impaled between jagged main dolomites, the contorta-mergel. From
Magasa, head west across the plateau to
Bondone and into the valley of the Chiese."
Astronomical Observatory There is also an astronomic observatory on the plateau, active since 1997. == See also ==