Paleontology Museum

Numerous shells (about 10,000 specimens) of gastropods and bivalves from the Pliocene and Pleistocene from numerous areas of Parma and Piacenza considered since the nineteenth century for the abundance of fossil finds "the cradle of the Pliocene". Historical collections such as Guidotti, Cocconi, Bagatti and modern collections such as Pelosio, Marasti and Raffi, Levi represent an inestimable and unique testimony of the specific diversity of the Padano Gulf millions of years ago. Their value is also taxonomic as the holotypes of some new species still valid today are kept in the museum.

The museum houses part of one of the most important and diversified Italian historical paleontological collections, Lawley's Tuscan Pliocene ichthyodontolites. Roberto Lawley was a 19th century Florentine naturalist, fond of paleontology who collected, classified and described numerous fossil remains of elasmobranchii and other cartilaginous fish in the Tuscan Pliocene. This collection is mostly kept in the paleontological museum of the University of Pisa but parts of this collection are kept in the museums of Bologna, Florence and Parma (Landini 2005). The entire Lawley collection was dismembered into many hamlets and is still preserved in several Italian museums. Museum of Natural and Territorial History of the University of Pisa, Museum of Geology and Paleontology of the University of Florence, Geo-paleontological Museum "Giovanni Capellini" of the University of Bologna, Geo-paleontological Museum of Valdinievole, Civic Museum of the Municipality of Montopoli.