page_title: Mount Bonifato
section_title: Paleontology
hierarchical_section_title: Mount Bonifato / Paleontology
caption_attribution_description: English: turtle egg fossils embedded in the travertine of Alcamo (Sicily) around 500,000 years ago.
context_page_description: Mount Bonifato is a mountain in north western Sicilly in the province of Trapani.
  It is famous for the pine forest and the Nature Reserve Bosco di Alcamo. On its slopes they have found a proto-historic necropolis and traces of an ancient settlement. If you go up to the peak you can see the remains of an old water reservoir and a gate, which implies the existence of surrounding walls. Besides, on the top there are the remains of a castle with four towers, that was built at the end of the 14th century by the Ventimiglia family, feudal lords of the territory of Alcamo for a certain period.
context_section_description: Between the mountain and Alcamo there is an imposing bank of  travertine dating back to Pleistocene which has been exploited nearly all to get slabs for the building industry. However the quarries are also an important site for paleontology because they have found important fossils there.
  In particular inside one of these quarries (now Geosite Travertino della Cava Cappuccini (Alcamo)), they have found remains (a natural cast of the brain, defences and molar teeth) of the dwarf elephant, Elephas falconeri,the spheric eggs and the fossilized armour of a big tortoise  (Geochelone sp.). These last two fossil findings are kept at  Museo paleontologico e geologico di Palermo "Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro". The site has also allowed to re-establish the correct "stratigraphy" of the Elephas in Sicily because, in a fracture of travertine filled with   "paleosuolo" (then more recently than travertine itself),  they have found  the remains of a medium size elephant, the Elephas mnaidriensis, which had been wrongly considered  the dwarf elephant’s ancestor.
  Inside Alcamo travertine they also discovered  specimens of giant dormouse, Cervus elaphus e Sus scrofa, hosted at the Civic Museum of Prehistory "Torre di Lignì" in Trapani.
  Alcamo  travertine quarry, where they have found different remains of paleontological importance,  has been menaced by a project for the construction o fan amphitheatre whose works were assigned in June 2014,  and modified afterwards  (in November 2014) so that this paleontological site will be partly protected.
caption: Tortoise’s fossil eggs inside the travertine of Alcamo
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