• Collections

The first core of palaeontological collections was formed during French rule thanks to Prof. Gian Battista Guidotti, a former professor of natural sciences. Later, during the reign of Maria Luigia – also thanks to donations by the Duchess – the most important collections now partly exhibited in the Museum were acquired, such as the collection of fossil fish from the Eocene of Bolca and the collection of Plio-Pleistocene vertebrates by Cortesi, and a large collection of fossil molluscs (about 300 species) also from the Plio-Pleistocene of Piacenza.
The ancient and recent collections preserved in the museum mainly include fossil finds of marine invertebrates and vertebrates from the foothills of the Parma and Piacenza Apennines.

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Vertebrate collections
The museum’s holdings consist mainly of tertiary marine vertebrates. In particular, they are preserved:
– 5 baleenopterids, three delphinids, and other parts of their skeletons.
The fossil cetacean remains preserved in the Museum, such as the skull of Cetotherium cortesii, are entirely part of the ancient heritage acquired in the 19th century (Cortesi and Podestà collections). The recognition and cataloguing of the various artefacts was difficult due to the two removals they underwent and an inaccurate 1968 inventory, which did not catalogue individual artefacts but grouped various artefacts belonging to different individuals under a single number without a comprehensive description. This heritage has recently been studied, a study being published in a volume on fossil cetaceans preserved in Italian museums;
– fossil cheloni of Parma and Piacenza;
– 1 skull of Bison priscus studied by Cuvier from alluvial deposits in the Po basin;
– a large and important collection of Eocene fossilised fish from the famous Bolca (Vr) deposit, donated in 1816 to the University’s Cabinet of Natural History by the Duchess of the States of Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla.
Among the numerous exhibits, all rigorously classified and labelled with original tags, stand out the specimens of Mene rombea and a Sarago, on the back of which there is an inscription testifying to the historical provenance of the collection
MALACOLOGICAL The museum’s ancient and recent malacological collections comprise mainly Neogene and Pleistocene molluscs (more than three thousand numbers) from the foothills of the Apennines in the Parma and Piacenza areas.
The material in the collections particularly documents the evolution of mollusc communities in western Emilia from the Neogene onwards. But considering that western Emilia is a key area for the study of the palaeobiological and palaeoclimatic evolution of the Mediterranean Basin, it is easy to understand how the importance of some malacological collections transcends their local scientific, as well as historical, value (see research page)

ANCIENT COLLECTIONS

Bagatti Collection
Undoubtedly the richest in artefacts, it is of purely taxonomic interest today as the precise locations of origin are not indicated and it is therefore mainly used as comparison material

Cocconi Collection
It is undoubtedly, and not only historically, the most important collection that is still of considerable scientific value today. In fact, there are numerous species established by Cocconi, some of which are still under discussion and others considered to be valid species in their own right. The finds from this collection were published in 1873 in the volume ‘Systematic Enumeration of Miocene and Pliocene Molluscs of the Provinces of Parma and Piacenza’, in the introduction to which Cocconi emphasises the importance of the Piacenza and Parma foothills of the Apennines (albeit to a lesser extent) for the palaeontologists of his time, citing Bellardi, Deshayes, Brocchi, Mayer, Hoernes, Michelotti, Doderlein, Jan, etc. as frequent visitors to those places.

Guidotti Collection
The Guidotti collection is of great importance to palaeontologists in order to distinguish different ecobiozones in the Pliocene, based on the extinction rates of molluscs with reference to western Emilia. In fact, the main interest of this collection lies in the fact that Guidotti was the only one to form it by directly assembling the material, indicating for each artefact the exact location where it had been collected; a criterion that was little followed at the time. It was this collection that contributed to Scottish geologist Lyell’s idea of dividing the Tertiary into the Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene on the basis of mollusc survival rates. Because of its topicality, and its scientific value, an initial attempt was made to separate it in its original conception from the Cocconi collection; a task that was not made easier by the museum’s various relocations over the last century, but not impossible given that most of the original labels, handwritten by Guidotti himself, are still preserved today

Levi Collection
This collection bears witness to the first attempt to do stratigraphy within the Pliocene on the basis of the extinction rates of molluscs, even though the author had not advanced any particular hypotheses, aware that rates can vary even in coeval environments (published in Riv. Ital. Paleont., 1900)

MODERN COLLECTIONS

Marasti Collection
It contains the molluscs from Maiatico (Parma) published in Boll. Soc. Paleont. It. (1970)

Pelosio Collections
A first collection brings together Lower Pleistocene molluscs from the Parma area illustrated in various publications (Giornali di Geologia, 1960; Ateneo Parmense, 1964; Boll. Soc. Paleont. It., 1962)

A second collection contains around one hundred species of molluscs from the Tabiano (Tabiano Bagni, Parma) including the holotype of Pleurotomoides serventii, a new species established by the author and published with the entire collection in Boll. Soc. Paleont. It., (1967)

Raffi Collection
The Raffi collection registered under no. 104 of the inventory of the former Museo Paleontologico Parmense contains molluscs from Quattro Castella (Reggio Emilia), published in Atti Soc. It. Sc. Nat. (1977)
The Raffi collection bearing No. 105 consists of scallops from various localities in western Emilia and also Spain, published in Boll. Soc. Paleont. It. (1970)

Venzo and Pelosio Collection
The collection contains around 300 species of molluscs from the Tortonian of Vigoleno (Piacenza) illustrated in Paleontografica italica (1963)

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