Monte Bolca, the Pesciara

Near the village of Bolca in the Lessini hills north of Verona, a small bed of limestone called the Pesciara, the fishbowl, holds the most diverse fossil fish fauna of any Cenozoic site: 250 species, among them many of the earliest known members of modern marine fish groups, with whole crustaceans, jellyfish and worms, feathers, insects and land plants. There is no actual mountain called Monte Bolca; the name covers the Pesciara and nearby sites such as Monte Postale. Its fish have been known since at least the 16th century and were among the first finely preserved fossils Europeans studied, first in depth by Giovanni Serafino Volta in the late 18th century, and four centuries of digging have completely exhausted one of its most productive levels. One fossil was long taken for a burrow trace until it was recognised as a plant, and in 1926 as a relative of the sea palm that still grows on the Pacific coast of North America; its type specimen is in the natural history museum of Verona. Bolca fish still sell for hundreds of dollars.