Paleobotanist Professor Edoardo Martinetto will be entertaining us on the evolution of Piedmontese flora over the last 6 million years. Fossil finds of fruits, seeds, leaves and pollen have recorded hundreds of taxonomic entities of terrestrial plants now extinct in Italy. The palaeoflora reconstructed in Piedmont is astonishingly abundant, primarily in the Pliocene, where the recognised genera number more than 200 and as many as 80 of them are now extinct in Europe. Overall, the fossil flora dating back between 4 and 2 million years makes it possible to recreate the complex mesophyll forest and to highlight the similarities with those of South-East Asia. It is indeed endowed with a high degree of specific diversity, due to the presence of deciduous trees, evergreens (especially in the shrub layer) and needle trees, which are similar to some formations in central China and southern Japan. Such current floristic associations develop as a response to a warm-humid temperate climate. They are therefore referred to by some as ‘temperate or subtropical rainforests’, as they bear witness to climatic conditions marked by high rainfall in the plant's growing season and milder winters than at present. This paleoclimate fostered the growth of plants no longer found either in Italy or in the rest of Europe, which gradually disappeared from 3 million years ago. Edoardo Martinetto, born in Ciriè (TO) in 1966, has a degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Earth Sciences. He is currently Associate Professor of Palaeontology and Palaeoecology at the University of Turin. From 1996 to 2023, he was entrusted with a number of paleontological lectures for the degree courses in Geological Sciences and Natural Sciences. He has carried out quite a number of palaeobotanical researche, mainly on Italian deposits dating back around 6 million years, with forays into the Oligocene and Carboniferous eras. Prof Martinetto has also been in charge for scientific research in the working group on the Fossil Forest of the Stura di Lanzo Stream, set up by the La Mandria Regional Park Authority to properly manage this major paleontological site in Piedmont.He has been leading researche in the international palaeobotanical community for about thirty years. He also supervised the edition of the international book Nature Through Time, published by Springer. Throughout 35 years of observations, he has collected, and not as yet published, a great deal of information on plant fossils and unknown fossiliferous sites, which he hopes will be taken into account in the future. Target audience: general public Duration: approx. 1 hour Reservation required
