The first complete Italian dinosaur is a new-born one of a new species and genus – and perfectly conserved. Up until now no scientist had ever even seen the liver and intestines of a reptile that lived more than 110 million years ago. The Neapolitans have already named it Ciro, but its scientific name is Scipionyx samniticus, a dwarf species only 50 centimetres in length that weighed no more than 500 grammes; perhaps a distant relative of the Velociraptor, it fed on small lizards and insects. In addition to the intestine and muscles in the chest and base of the tail, also conserved are the nails covering the bony claws. The fact that the intestine proved to be surprisingly short makes it doubtful that the metabolism of the Scipionyx could have been cold-blooded. As far as that goes, it is already known that many dinosaurs were able to regulate their body temperature just as mammals do, a fact which raises questions about the theory that their extinction came about as a result of climatic change in the form of a general drop in temperature. Moreover, the particular configuration and arrangement of Ciro’s internal organs led to an important finding: in the heat of the hunt or race the little dinosaur’s diaphragm would get compressed by the exceptionally well-developed internal organs, thus making it possible to confer an increased rhythm to the action, as though a supercharger had kicked in.
The dinosaur’s amazing conservation is due to rapid burial in marine sediments at the famous Pietraroja fossil deposit in Benevento Province, which sediments normally contain plentiful fish and marine invertebrates. And herein lies an important reason for interest in the tiny dinosaur, which changes the picture of the Mesozoic as relates to the central Mediterranean. Italy in the Cretaceous must no longer be thought of as just a vast expanse of ocean dotted by some rare coral atolls, but rather in terms of a more complex reality where emerged land must have been more extensive than previously believed. As just observed, where now the peninsula is found was once an ocean called Tetide where, as Leonardo wrote, “great schools of fish used to dart about”, marine molluscs such as ammonites roamed about, and corals and Rudistae built their islands just below the sea surface. Fossils and marine sediments comprise the major part of rocks in Italy’s Mesozoic, which have nothing in common with sandstone found in Great Britain, the United States and China with their plentiful remains of continents and large reptiles.
Our little fellow instead confirms what many Italian geologists already knew; namely, that the Italy of 100 million years ago was a very special sea filled with islands and peninsulas sometimes separated by narrow, shallow sounds and straits which overall formed an environment where animals not necessarily tied to aquatic life could move about, such as the Scipionyx samniticus dinosaur. A emerged sandbar of calcareous origin was likely the place where the Scipionyx was swept away by a wave in stormy weather while it was chasing after some small animal or playing by the sea. It drowned only to ‘wake up’ again after a sleep lasting millions of years. The site where Ciro was found in the Matese area is a typically Italian geotopo, which is to say one of those choice spots in terms of geology deserving protection because of their outstanding naturalistic and cultural value.
Another extraordinary finding was made in a limestone cave in Altamura near Bari in the Puglia Region. Approximately 30,000 footprints frequently arranged in trails up to dozens of metres long were discovered. Apparently left by from 50 to 100 individual creatures, the impressions appear on a stratum of what is called "Altamura Limestone" some 12,000 square metres in size and dating back approximately 70 million years (Senonian). Even if determining the species of the prints represents one of the frontiers in modern ichnology, no less than four families of herbivorous dinosaurs have been recognized, among which Sauropoda, Ceratopsidae, Ankylosaurus and Iguanodon and – so it seems – also a family of carnivorous Therapsida. There are prints with three to five nails and “hooves”. Often it is possible to recognize the small “clouds” of carbonous mud raised during the march, and in a few instances the “folds” in the skin under the foot. The gaits are normal, which is to say there no signs of animals in the act of chasing or being chased; the tranquil tail marks of larg e herbivores grazing are discernible. If Ciro confirmed what many already believed, the exceptional finding in Altamura forces us to think in terms of a nearby emerged continent in the Dalmatian Adriatic region neither whose co-ordinates nor dimensions were previously suspected. Instead of being bereft of dinosaurs as formerly thought, Italy suddenly discovers itself to be dinosaur country.