Bolca - Fossilized treasure

Reconstruction for an animated video about the Bolca fossil site (created for the Museo della Natura e dell'Uomo in Padua), featuring some of the best preserved fossils in the world, tropical fish from Italy dating back around 50 million years.

Here are depicted some of the most iconic species: the shark Galeorhinus cuvieri, the spectacular Eoplatax papilio, Padovathurus and Mene rhombea. For three of these animals, the preservation is so exceptional that even traces of their original coloration are sometimes visible.

Bolca is a vast fossil site known for over half a millennium, centuries before paleontology even existed. It literally changed the course of natural sciences at a time when the past was believed to be unchanging and fossils were thought to be nothing more than curious stone oddities