The Plateau of Hippos 900,000 Years Ago
The oldest records of the Serravalle area date back to the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, documented by the fossil deposit of mammals from 700,000 and 900,000 years ago, found in fluvial-lacustrine deposits in the areas of Cesi and Collecurti.
Since the second half of the 1980s, fluvial-lacustrine sedimentary sequences have been identified in the localities of Collecurti and Cesi, yielding numerous vertebrate fossils dated to 900,000 and 700,000 years ago, respectively, in the Galerian period of the Lower Pleistocene.
These deposits formed in specific tectonic depressions connected to the large lacustrine basin of the Plestine Plateau, during a cool and humid climatic phase with relatively mild winter temperatures.
In particular, at Collecurti, remains of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, deer, dog, bear, hyena, and rodent have been found. The dominant species is the hippopotamus, represented by five adults and three young individuals. The chronology of the deposit points to a transitional moment between the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, characterized by migratory and evolutionary events of species in response to climatic changes (intensification of glacial phenomena, increased seasonality and aridity, expansion of steppes, disappearance of many species, and the arrival of new ones from Central Asia and Africa, such as the elephant gradually replacing the Mammuthus).
The Cesi basin, more recent in formation, features a less thick lacustrine sedimentary succession compared to Collecurti. The faunal association, including elephants, rhinoceroses, equids, hippopotamuses, fallow deer, deer, bison, and a sabertooth tiger, indicates a climatic improvement from initially rather harsh conditions.
In the archaeological field, with the appearance of the first hominids, the plateau soon became a pivotal point for trans-Apennine routes and a favored area for stable or seasonal settlements. Important evidence of these anthropic frequentations includes numerous flint lithic artifacts, dozens of flint flakes and fragments, charcoal, millimetric nodules of ocher, and vertebrate teeth and bone fragments, all from the finer-grained levels of the depositional sequence found at Fonte delle Mattinate (Serravalle del Chienti) and datable to the Upper Paleolithic, between 45,000 and 30,000 years ago.
Most of the artifacts, currently under study by researchers and students of the Department of Earth Sciences and the Museum of Natural Sciences of the University of Camerino, are on display at the Mu.P.A., Paleontological Museum of Serravalle di Chienti.
