The Lavini di Marco biotope is a protected area of the Autonomous Province of Trento, of about 35 hectares, protected since 1992 and entrusted to the Museo civico di Rovereto. The Lavini are an expanse of limestone blocks, the result of landslides that came down from the slopes of Monte Zugna. On the slabs left bare by the slide, in 1990, the surveyor Luciano Chemini noticed holes arranged in a regular pattern: they were footprints.
What to see
The palaeontologist Giuseppe Leonardi identified several trackways, about a hundred prints in all, left by dinosaurs some two hundred million years ago, when stretches of water and sand alternated here. He recognised the tracks of bipedal herbivores and smaller, three-toed prints of carnivores.
The vegetation is mostly pioneer, shrubby and marshy, with a dense wood of black pine introduced for reforestation. Two small lakes, the Laghet grant and the Laghet picol, hold wetland plants such as bulrush and common reed and rich wildlife: this is the only site in Trentino where the crested newt lives, and a group of alders holds a colony of grey herons.
Visiting
Routes, access and guided visits should be checked with the Museo civico di Rovereto or on the Province's protected-areas website.
Our editors' tip
The prints survived thanks to chance: microscopic algae covered them before new deposits of sand arrived, protecting them from erosion by the waves. Millions of years later, the landslide brought those limestones back to light.
