A visit to this landscape, its villages and fossil museums is a fascinating way to discover a world that has been gone for more than 200 million years.

Monte San Giorgio is one of the world's most important fossil deposits from the Middle Triassic, a geological period between 247 and 237 million years ago. The fossils from this mountain are world-famous for their diversity and unique preservation. They have been brought to light and studied by Swiss and Italian palaeontologists since 1850.

The Monte San Giorgio Fossil Museum, rebuilt and extended by Ticino architect Mario Botta, was inaugurated on 13.10.2012. The structure displays a selection of fossilized animals and plants from the unique UNESCO World Heritage Site of Monte San Giorgio.

A 2.5 m long reconstruction of the land dinosaur Ticinosuchus welcomes visitors to the new fossil museum in the village center of Meride. It lived around 240 million years ago on the edge of a richly populated subtropical sea, alongside many other marine dinosaurs and fish adapted to aquatic life. The excellently preserved skeletons from the Middle Triassic of Monte San Giorgio have made the "Mountain of the Dinosaurs" a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Spread over four floors, the exhibition presents the wide variety of creatures that inhabited the sea and coast of southern Ticino between 245 and 180 million years ago. Illustrations and models help the public to understand this long-extinct world, whose fossils have been excavated, prepared and scientifically described by Swiss and Italian experts since 1850.


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