Today, Monteviale is a charming hill town situated a few kilometres away from Vicenza, that from the end of the 1700s and for at least 150 years it was known above all for its lignite mines. In addition to this brown coal, over time miners here also recovered large quantities of fossil bones that reveal a unique and extraordinary fauna, inclusive of fish, crocodiles, turtles, ancestors of the hippos and rhinos, and giant bats. These fossils belong to a lost world from the early Oligocene, between 34 and 28 million years ago, when the local environment was extremely similar to that of the present-day Caribbean. Here, an island once rose out of an extinct volcano, surrounded by a lagoon closed in by coral reefs. Its warm, clear, shallow waters were home to a highly diverse flora and fauna.
