AMQ 634 Orombelli et al 36,1 5-37 corretto 120723.pub Available online http://amq.aiqua.it ISSN (print): 2279-7327, ISSN (online): 2279-7335 Alpine and Mediterranean Quaternary, 36 (1), 2023, 5-37 https://doi.org/10.26382/AMQ.2023.04 INTRODUCTION TO QUATERNARY STUDIES IN ITALY: FROM ARDUINO TO THE FIRST HALF OF THE PAST CENTURY Giuseppe Orombelli1, Maria Rita Palombo2,3, Cesare Ravazzi4,5 1 Department of Environmental and Geological Sciences, University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy. 2 Area della Ricerca di Roma 1, IGAG-CNR, Montelibretti (RM), Italy. 3 Department of Earth Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Italy. 4 Laboratory of Palinology and Palaeoecology, IGAG-CNR, Milano, Italy. 5 NBFC (National Biodiversity Future Center), Palermo, Italy. Corresponding author: Cesare Ravazzi ABSTRACT: A summary of the origin and development of Quaternary studies in Italy since the 18th to mid 20th century is present- ed, focussing on marine sediment stratigraphy, continental glacial deposits, vertebrate palaeontology, palaeobotany, and palaeo- anthropology. The history of the Quaternary sciences in Italy is also figured in a timeline of main milestones. The presence in Ital- ian Quaternary deposits of cold-water Atlantic immigrants, which currently inhabit boreal seas, was identified by Brocchi in 1814. Following the 18th International Geological Congress (IGC) (1948), there was a surge in interest in these species, resulting in the identification of numerous boreal species (foraminifera, ostracods, bivalves, and gastropods). Even in the second half of the twen- tieth century, considerable attention was paid to these "northern guests", their systematics, and taxonomic and biostratigraphic revisions, which contributed to defining the species that potentially have a chronological distribution and palaeoecological signifi- cance useful for defining Pleistocene marine geochronological stages. The marine sediments, well exposed in Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, had an important role in the development of Quaternary stratigraphy since Lyell in 1833 introduced the “Newer Pliocene”, later renamed Pleistocene. Several marine stages were defined in Italy, Sicilian by Doderlein in 1872, Calabrian by Gignoux in 1910, Tyrrhenian by Issel in 1914, Milazzian by Deperet in 1918 and other later on. A scientific debate on the Plio-Pleistocene boundary began at the 18th International Geological Congress (IGC) in London (1948) when it was established that it should be placed ”at the horizon of the first indication of climatic deterioration in the Italian Neogene succession” on the base of changes in marine faunas. The continental deposits, today attributed to the Quaternary, were described and mapped as ’alluvial‘ and ’diluvial terrains‘ until the eighteen seventies. Glacigenic deposits were identified and described in Italy at the foot of the Western Alps by Martins and Gastaldi in 1850 and, in the following decade, at the foot of the Central and Eastern Alps by De Mortillet, Omboni and others. In the last decades of the 19th century, Taramelli, Sacco, and Cozzaglio, began to distinguish the evidence for more than one glacia- tion. Since the publication of Penck & Brückner’s volumes in 1909, the four-glaciation scheme was generally adopted. The past presence of glaciers on the Apuan Alps and the Apennines was first recognised in the latest 19th century. Subsequently, over a hundred Pleistocene glaciers had been identified and attributed to the Würm glaciation. The palaeobotanical character of the Quaternary was first recognised by Reboul in 1833, as “characterized by animal and plant species similar to modern living ones at the same site”. Latterly, Brongniart, Sternberg and Balsamo-Crivelli first classified plant macrofossils species, provided timelines and compared finds to the modern extant forms according to the Linnean system. By the end of the 19th century, it became clear that the assemblage of extinct and eradicated plant species in northern Italy gradually decreased through the Pliocene, the Quaternary interglacial and the postglacial periods (Sordelli). The excavating peats at the onset of the 20th century suggested that the macrofossil record could be organised on a robust stratigraphical basis. In 1931-1932, the introduction of palynology in Italy marked the initial development of microbotanical stratigraphy and its application to vegeta- tion, climate history and interactions with prehistoric civilisations. Since the Renaissance, the remains of Quaternary terrestrial mammals have attracted the attention of collectors and scholars when the collection of fossils from the Upper Valdarno was stimulated by Ferdinando I de’ Medici and Andrea Cesalpino reporting the finding of elephant bones at San Giovanni Valdarno. By the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, several new species were identified from the mammalian remains primarily found in the Tuscany basins. Various geologists and naturalists contributed to the knowledge of the Pleistocene deposits and their mammal fossil record in northern, central (e.g. in the Roman Basin), and southern Italy, as well as in Sicily and Sardinia, from where a number of new endemic species were discovered. In 1865 Pareto proposed the Villafranchian Stage for the sequence of fluvial and lacustrine sediments of Villafranca d’Asti (Piedmont). The comparison of the mammalian fauna of Villafranca with that of other Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene faunal as- semblages from Italy, led successively to the definition of the ‘Villafranchian European Land Mammal Age‘. Lastly, a brief outline of the beginnings of palaeoanthropological research and the noteworthy Palaeolithic human remains discov- ered in Italy until the first half of the 20th century is given. Keywords: stratigraphy; glaciations; vertebrate palaeontology; palaeobotany; palaeoanthropology; history of science. 6 Orombelli G. et al. 1. FOREWORD Italy possesses a rich and diverse variety of geo- logical, palaeobiological and archaeological archives from the Quaternary. The studies undertaken in Italy have provided important contributions to the recognition of the peculiar characters of the Quaternary, i.e the cli- mate and the connected environmental changes that led to the glacial-interglacial cycles, the evolution of palaeo- environments and mammalian communities, as well as the diffusion and settlements of prehistoric human popu- lations in the country. Here we summarise the first studies on marine sediments in relation to stratigraphy and palaeoclimatol- ogy, the continental deposits since the dawn of the ’glacial theory‘, and the fossil continental mammal fau- nas and plants. We also note the earliest research in palaeoethnology as well as the discovery of Palaeolithic human remains. We focus on the period from the 18th century to the mid-20th century, before the revolution in Quaternary stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology began by Cesare Emiliani (1955, Fig. 1d, see section 2.3) with the isotopic studies of deep-sea cores, at the time of the IV INQUA Congress held in Rome-Pisa (1953) and the first international scientific journal entirely dedicated to Quaternary, Quaternaria, published in Rome in 1954 by Alberto C. Blanc (Fig. 1c). An introduction to Quaternary studies in Italy can ideally start with one of the fathers of the stratigraphy, the Veronese Giovanni Arduino, “the man who invented the Quaternary” (Gibbard, 2019). In a letter addressed to Antonio Vallisnieri, professor of Natural History at the University of Padua, written in 1759 and published in Venice in 1760, Arduino (1) wrote: ‘As far as I observed up to now, the sequence of strata composing the visible bark of the Earth seems to me to be distinct in four gen- eral and subsequent orders. The four orders may be considered as four huge strata …placed on top of each other …each of them made by countless other minor strata, composed of materials of many different types’. The four orders clearly show ‘to have been formed not only in different times but also under very different con- ditions’. ‘The first order, the deepest, and the second, following the first, form the great mountains, the third forms small mountains and hills, while the fourth forms the plains … also formed by beds over beds, by floods with deposition of materials carried down the mountains by waters of rivers and streams, reduced …to pebbles, gravel, sand and mud’. Arduino (1760, Fig. 1a) used the terms primary, secondary and tertiary as adjectives, respectively for the first, second and third order but he did not mention the term quaternary for the fourth order. Probably since that time this word remained about to happen. The term Quaternaire was first informally (“pour ainsi dire”) used by Desnoyers (1829, p. 193) to designate the marine deposits “plus récens (sic) que les terrains tertiaires du bassin de la Seine”, but he denounced usage of this word in a foot- note on the same page. The name Quaternaire was succesively applied by de Serre (1830) and “finally de- fined on palaeontological grounds in 1833 by H. Re- boul” (Head & Gibbard, 2015). He wrote: “Les monu- ments fossils des terrains tertiaries appartiennent presque tous à des espèces perdues. . . . C’est- pourquoi on a dû appeller quaternaire la période subséquente, dont les terrains sont caractérisés par des espèces animals et végétales, semblables aux êtres actuellement vivans dans les mêmes lieux” (Reboul, 1833). In the same period (1828-1829) Charles Lyell (Fig. 1a) was visiting Italy from Piedmont to Sicily “in order to acquire more information concerning the tertiary for- mations”, having “already conceived the idea of classing the different tertiary group, by reference to the propor- tional number of recent species found fossil in each” (Lyell, 1833). He examined the collections of ”tertiary shells” collected by some Italian palaeomalacol- ogists (F.A. Bonelli, G.B. Guidotti, O.G. Costa) in Pied- mont, the “Subappennine” (Parma) and southern Italy in Turin, Parma and Naples, and compared them with liv- ing species of the Mediterranean. Lyell himself exam- ined many localities in southern Italy (Ischia, the flanks of Mount Etna and Val di Noto), collecting fossil shells. His investigations led him to conclude with “most lively surprise” that the majority of the fossil species collected “even at the height of 2000 feet above the level of the sea” were “species now inhabiting the Mediterrane- an” (Lyell, 1833). Lyell, proposing a subdivision of “the great tertiary epoch” attributed the beds of Ischia and Val di Noto to the fourth and youngest subdivision, named “Newer Pliocene”, that was renamed “Pleistocene” a few years later (Lyell, 1839, Fig. 1a). The marine Pleistocene of Italy was later studied by many Italian and foreign scientists, assuming great rele- vance for the Quaternary stratigraphy. Despite the Arduino’s early hesitation, the term Quaternary was introduced relatively late in Italy. The continental deposits currently attributed to the Quater- nary, were, until the second half of the 19th century, gen- erally named “Terreni di trasporto antico e recente” or “Alluvioni antiche e moderne” (ancient and recent transport/alluvial deposits) or with the Latin names Dilu- vium and Alluvium, respectively. The term Quaternary was used with differing meanings. Among the first Italian essays on stratigraphy, Pilla (1845) distinguished, in the deposits above the ‘Tertiary terrain’, from top down- wards, the ‘Recent (or Modern) terrain’ and the ‘Ancient alluvial terrain (Diluvium and Erratic boulders)’ The Mod- ern terrain was subdivided into lacustrine, marine and ‘quaternary terrain (emerged beaches)’. Later Pilla (1847-51) specified in a textbook that he defined ‘Formation…. a rock or a union of strata produced in a narrow period of time’ and ‘Terrain…. a union of for- - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 The original sentences reproduced from previous authors are quoted in single quotation marks ‘…’, if literally translated from the Italian, in double quotation marks “…“ in roman type, if in English, in italics if in other languages. 7 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ mations showing features of chronological similarity’. He further stated that he included the ‘raised beaches or post-pliocene of Lyell’ as quaternary terrain. Pareto (1846b) named ‘quaternary … the most recent among the sedimentary terrains …to distinguish it from the sub- appenine tertiary formation’. In one of the first Italian geology textbooks (Elementi di Geologia Pratica e Teor- ica), Collegno (1847) incidentally mentioned that recent- ly the ‘transport terraines have been named as Quater- nary terrains by a few modern geologists’. Scarabelli (1852, Fig. 1a) described the Quaternary deposits (also called Apennine diluvium) of the Imola region, as a se- quence of gravel, silt and sands with fossils of Rhinocer- os, other pachyderms and continental molluscs, uncon- formably overlying the marine Pliocene. De La Marmora (1857) devoted an entire chapter of his book (“Voyage en Sardaigne”, part 3: Geological description) to the “Terrains Quaternaires”. He included in his “Terrains Quaternaires” the “Grés quaternaire” (Quaternary sand- stone) with marine shells, unconformably overlying Plio- cene marls or on bedrock, the raised beaches, the bone breccia, the Diluvium, the recent alluvial deposits, the barrier beaches. Stoppani (1873), in his Corso di Geolo- gia - vol. 2 Geologia stratigrafica proposed that the Ce- nozoic Era should be followed by the Neozoic Era (Post- tertiary or Quaternary), in turn followed by the Anthropo- zoic Era. Subsequently in a textbook on Geology, Curi- oni (1877) asserted: ‘Many geologists subdivide the terrain that was formed after the new Pliocene into three epochs, i.e: the epoch of the ancient alluvium, the epoch of the diluvium, the glacial epoch. This complex of de- posits is said quaternary.’ The Carta geologica della Liguria marittima by Pareto (1846a, Fig. 1a), the Carta Geologica della Pro- vincia di Bologna (Scarabelli, 1853), the Carta Geologi- ca della Provincia di Ravenna by Scarabelli (1854, Fig. 1a), the Carte Géologique de l’Ile de Sardaigne by de La Marmora (1856), the Lugano-Como 1873 geologic map 1:100.000 by Spreafico, Negri and Stoppani (1873), are among the first geological maps to adopt the term Quaternary in Italy (generally as a synonym for Diluvium). However, the terms Alluvium and Diluvium (and equivalents) were still in use until the eighteen seventies on most maps. The term Quaternary started to be used in the Italian official geological maps since the first edition of the Carta Geologica d’Italia at the scale 1:1,111,111 (1881) and of the first geological maps at the scale 1:100,000, published in Rome (1884). On these maps, two stratigraphic units were distin- guished above the Pliocene: Quaternario (Quaternary) and Recente (Recent). Beginning from the second edi- tion of the Carta Geologica d’Italia at the scale 1: 1,000,000 (1889), the Quaternario has been subdivided into antico (“Plistocene”) (sic) and Recente. The Quater- nary, subdivided in Pleistocene and Holocene, ap- peared in the legend of the official geological maps of Italy 1:100,000 since the 1920s. A comprehensive over- view of the history of the cartographic production by the Servizio Geologico d’Italia is presented by Console et al. (2017). 2. THE DAWN OF QUATERNARY MARINE GEO- CHRONOLOGY AND CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY IN ITALY The Mediterranean region, with its long, tectonical- ly undisturbed, and well-exposed stratigraphic Neogene sequences, has played a pivotal role in the development of Quaternary stratigraphy since the beginning of geo- logical research. In particular, along the coasts of south- ern Italy and Sicily, marine sediments have been uplift- ed by several tens of metres over the last three million years. The abundance of hemipelagic sediments fa- vours deconstructing, for instance, the microfaunal and nannofloral evolution, the chronological assessment of species and the palaeoenvironmental development through time. 2.1. The “northern guest” immigrants in marine fau- nas The presence in Italian Quaternary deposits of cold -water Atlantic immigrants, which currently inhabit bore- al seas, was proposed by Brocchi in 1814 on the basis of an erroneous attribution to "Venus islandica" of some Sinodia shells. It was later correctly reported for the first time by Philippi (1834-1836), who identified some spe- cies of boreal molluscs in the Quaternary deposits of Sicily. Following the 18th IGC (1948), there was a surge in interest in these species, resulting in the identification of numerous boreal species in other groups (foraminifera, ostracods, bivalves and gastropods). Even in the second half of the twentieth century, consid- erable attention was paid to these "northern guests", their systematics, and taxonomic and biostratigraphic revisions (e.g., Malatesta & Zarlenga, 1986; Pasini & Colalongo, 1997; Faranda & Gliozzi, 2011; Gibbard & Head, 2010, and references therein). This contributed to defining the species that potentially have a chronologi- cal distribution and palaeoecological significance which is valuable in defining Pleistocene marine geochrono- logical stages. 2.2. The marine stages proposed before the 1960s In the beginning, the proposal and definition of marine stages were primarily based on palaeontological criteria (particularly bivalves and gastropods, as well as corals, ostracods and benthic foraminifera), and later, particularly but not exclusively, on planktonic foraminif- era and calcareous nannofossils. In recent years, palae- omagnetic evidence, absolute dating, and palaeoclimat- ic and proxy studies have all played an increasing role in marine chronostratigraphy and geochronology. The Sicilian, the first stage to be proposed during the 19th century, is one of the best defined among the divisions. Doderlein (1872) described the Sicilian as a Pliocene stage typified as “par le calcaire à coquilles tertiaires des environs de Palerme, Bagheria et de la baie de Ficarazzi et par le mélange de calcaire pliocène et de laves qui constituent le sous-sol de la plaine de Catane”. The palaeontological characteristics of the Sicilian fossiliferous levels emphasised by Doderlein (particularly the increase of "northern guests") corre- spond to those cited later by De Sfefani (1891b) as typi- cal of the level intermediate between the first and third of the three stratigraphic levels into which the italian palaeontologist divides his "post-Pliocene." De Stefani (1876), indeed, distinguished a post-Lower Pliocene, whose malacofauna still had affinities with the Pliocene, and a post-Middle Pliocene characterised by an in- crease in "northern guests" and a decrease in survivors of the Pliocene. In the post-Upper Pliocene, the latter characteristics became more pronounced, and modern species also proliferated. The well-known Calabrian Stage was introduced into the scientific literature by Gignoux (1910), who con- sidered that it was deposited after the Pliocene. He des- ignated the section of S. Maria di Catanzaro as the ref- erence locality, where the base of the new stage was placed. Gignoux (1913) observed: "Au Monte S. Maria, le plateau culminant du point 207 est occupé par des marnes blanches qui recouvrent le banc à Cyprina is- landica" (recte Arctica islandica). The French scholar also underlined that the deposition of such a level re- flected a variation in the sedimentation accompanied by a change in the benthic community, while no discontinu- ities arising from flooding were present. Therefore, he concluded that during the Calabrian, a pre-existing clay- ey facies persisted, and this continuity of sedimentation related the early Pliocene to the Calabrian. As a result, according to Gignoux (1910, 1913), the Calabrian would correspond to the post-Pliocene of De Stefani (1891b), characterised by the appearance of molluscs of boreal origin (i.e., Artica islandica) in the Mediterranean Sea. Decades after Gignoux's publications, micropalae- ontological analyses at Santa Maria di Catanzaro have demonstrated that, Hyalinea baltica and Globorotalia truncatulinoides excelsa were present in the same bed where A. islandica first appears (Sprovieri et al., 1973; Colalongo & Pasini, 1980; Colalongo et al., 1980, 1981, 1982). As a result, Gignoux's ’Calabrian‘ deposits are actually transgressive on the underlying Pliocene marls, the latter referable to Doderlein's (1872) Sicilian Stage, as are several sections described by the same author (e.g., Caraffa, Monasterace, Palermo). Subsequently, the chronostratigraphical signifi- cance and rank of the Calabrian Stage were reconsid- ered several times in the competition among the various Pleistocene and Pliocene sections exposed in southern Italy (Cita et al., 2008). This continued until its formal definition in 2012 as the second stage of the Pleisto- cene Series and Quaternary System, following the Gela- sian (Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point, GSSP, at Vrica, Calabria) (Cita et al., 2012). Further- more, the evidence of a biostratigraphical correlation between the stratotype of this stage and the G-G level at Santa Maria di Catanzaro, and thus the priority of the Sicilian name over the Calabrian, demonstrated that the subdivision of the lower Pleistocene into Calabrian and Sicilian (Gignoux, 1913) or into Calabrian, Emilian and Sicilian (Ruggieri & Selli, 1950) (see below) can no long- er be accepted. The Tyrrhenian Stage, recommended in 1914 by Issel (Fig. 1b), is one of the stage names, proposed at the beginning of the 20th century, that is still widely used in the scientific literature, albeit with different chronos- tratigraphical connotations. Indeed, a formal definition of the Tyrrhenian Stage has never been proposed and indeed no potential subdivision of the Upper Pleistocene (following the formally defined Middle Pleistocene Chi- banian Stage) has thus far been approved. The defini- tion of stage/age and Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the Upper Pleistocene Subseries/ Subepoch is indeed still pending. Issel (1914) based the establishment of the new Tyrrhenian Stage (originally called "Tirreno") on the study of the rich marine fauna, characterised by the presence of ’tropical‘ taxa and those preferring warm waters, present in the coastal marine deposits of the stratigraphic succession still exposed at Cala Mosca (Is Mesas, Capo Sant'Elia, Gulf of Cagliari). Following Issel (1914), all the deposits subsequent to the Sicilian of Doderlein and prior to the Holocene (which at the time still remained poorly defined) could be referred to the Tyrrhenian. Accordingly, the "Tirreno" in its original con- cept would include the entire Upper Pleistocene. The Cala Mosca levels were deposited during a high sea-level stand phase. Consequently, the name Tyrrhenian has generally been used to indicate marine deposits of the Last Interglacial. Despite this, following Issel (1914), the "Tirreno" stage would cover a much longer time period, spanning from the warmest phase of the Late Pleistocene, documented by the presence of "Strombus bubonius" (recte Thetystrombus latus, Fig. 1b), to the last glacial stage. Later, Bonifay & Mars (1959) assigned the typical "Strombus bubonius" faunal peak to their newly proposed chronostratigraphic subunit of the Tyrrhenian, the Eutyrrhenian, choosing the Cala Mosca beach deposit as the stratotype. Coastal deposits at a height corresponding to the highest last interglacial sea-level stand would represent the Eutyrrhenian subu- nit. This led to the correlation between the Eutyrrhenian and Marine Isotopic Substage 5.e. Depéret proposed the Milazzian Stage in 1918, based on the rich mollusc fauna discovered in the peb- bly sandy levels exposed along the western coast of Capo Milazzo (north-eastern Sicily). In contrast to the other stages already mentioned, the Milazzian was used mostly before the 1970s and has now generally fallen out of use. According to Depéret (1918), the Milazzian would have spanned a temperate time interval, with the corresponding level characterised by a banal malacofau- na similar to that found today in the Mediterranean. Gignoux (1913) had already reported the presence of such a mollusc association that differs from the ’cold‘ one of the Sicilian deposits and that of the Tyrrhenian "Strombus levels". A similar fauna was found at Capo Milazzo in marine terraced deposits which are located about 50-60 m above sea level (Ruggieri & Greco, 1965). This altitude is intermediate between the height of the Sicilian deposits of Gignoux (1913) (100 m) and that of the "Tyrrhenian" levels with "Strombus bubonius" and the Senegalese molluscs of Issel (1914). The Milaz- zian Stage, indeed, was not a well-founded division, 8 Orombelli G. et al. During the second half of the 20th century to re- cent times, multidisciplinary studies of the well known Italian long stratigraphical sequences led to the revision of already defined Pleistocene marine stages, as well as to proposals of new divisions (cf. Head, 2019), confirm- ing the crucial role of Italian deposits in the development of Quaternary marine chronostratigraphy. 2.4. The first proposals for the Plio-Pleistocene boundary Although being the first boundary to be examined by taking into account the stratotype concept, the ques- tion of the boundary between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene was not officially debated until many years after the pioneering research of the 19th century. The criteria for the definition of the Plio-Pleistocene boundary were first discussed in 1948, during the 18th IGC in London. It was established that the boundary should be placed «at the horizon of the first indication of climatic deterioration in the Italian Neogene succession and should be based on changes in marine faunas». Four years later, during the XIX IGC, Alger 1952, the Plio-Pleistocene boundary was confirmed in the four Italian stratigraphical sections exposed at Monte Mario, near Rome (Blanc et al.,1954), Castell’Arquato (Piacenza) (Di Napoli Alliata, 1954), Santerno (Imola) (Ruggieri, 1954), and Val Musone (Ancona) (Selli, 1954). Later, during VI IGC (1961, Warsaw, Poland) and VII of the XIX IGCs (1965, Denver, Colorado, USA), it was decided that the boundary had to be placed in the Le Castella section (Crotone-Spartivento, Calabria), at the base of the sandy level (G-G1) characterised by the first appearance (FAD) of the benthic foraminiferan Hya- linea baltica (Emiliani et al., 1961). 3. CONTINENTAL QUATERNARY DEPOSITS Among the large variety of continental deposits, this chapter mainly concerns the glacigenic materials, since they have gradually assumed significant im- portance in the Quaternary terrestrial stratigraphy of the country. 3.1. The advent of the glacial theory and the Ice Age As already mentioned, the continental deposits in Italy today attributed to the Quaternary, after Arduino and for the most part of the 19th century, were described as alluvial and diluvial deposits. The latter were original- ly thought to have resulted from the Noachian flood, and were later attributed to a variety of origins. In northern Italy the large alluvial plain of the Po Valley drew the attention of the first geologists. Breislak (1822) recog- nised that the plain, in the province of Milan, was entire- ly composed of ‘alluvial or transport terrain’ at every depth where it could be observed. He just made a litho- logical distinction between pebbles and erratic boulders, gravels and sands, clays, calcareous tufa, peats, etc. Moreover, he believed that the erratic boulders were transported by icebergs delivered by the alpine glaciers into the sea, an idea widespread at his time. Venturi several scholars having questioned its validity. For ex- ample, Ottman & Picard (1954) noted that the presence of Patella ferruginea and Luria lurida in the Milazzian deposits, which entered the Mediterranean basin during the "Tyrrhenian," suggests a more recent age (Last In- terglacial) for the levels of the Capo Milazzo terrace, which was tectonically disturbed and uplifted, as already hypothesised by Molino Foti (1869). The attribution to MIS 5e was made possible later by absolute dates on Glycymeris sp. (Amino Acid Racemization dating to c. 120 ka) and on a calcareous algae nodule (U-series dating: 83-100 ka) (Belluomini, 1985; Hearty et al., 1986). During the London IGC (1948), Ruggieri & Selli (1949, 1950) introduced a new stage (Emilian or Calabri- an II/"Hot Upper Calabrian"), chronologically interposed between the Calabrian and the Sicilian. Studies of Plio- Pleistocene sequences exposed in the Emilia region revealed deposits of a warm-temperate fauna. Both Selli and Ruggieri (Ruggieri, 1954,1957; Selli, 1967,1973) confirmed the original definition of the Emilian, pointing out its climatic character and hypothesising a correlation with the ’Gunz-Mindel‘ interglacial. Following the Italian researchers, the Emilian stratotype had to be defined in the Santerno river valley where a long Pliocene- Pleistocene marine sequence, characterized by the ap- pearance progression of boreal species (A. islandica, H. baltica, and G. truncatulinoides excelsa), is well exposed between the villages of Tossignano and Imola (Bologna). Later, Ruggieri et al. (1977) highlighted the presence of many temperate episodes in several Pleis- tocene sequences in Italy. Such evidence suggests that the Emilian cannot be distinguished by a single temper- ate climate criterion. Accordingly, the new definition of the Emilian Stage was based on biostratigraphical crite- ria, i.e., H. baltica FAD in the Santerno section level, the site already proposed as the Emilian stratotype. For an updated state of the art on Global Boundary Stratotype and Points (GSSPs) in the Quaternary sys- tem, based on the stratigraphic record of Italy, consult Capraro & Maiorano (2023, this volume). 2.3. The emergence of marine isotopic stratigraphy In the 1950s, the Italian-American geologist Cesare Emiliani (Fig. 1d) significantly advanced knowledge on marine stages by applying the Urey's isotopical analytic method to calcareous foraminifers. He observed that in the shells the ratio between 18O and 16O (δ18O) periodi- cally varied by about 0.2% and related such a variation to ocean temperature fluctuations. He correlated the palaeotemperature fluctuations deduced from isotopic data with glacial and interglacial phases (Emiliani, 1955), introducing the numbering of the ’marine isotope stages‘ which is still used today, although with several refine- ments (see Railsback et al., 2015, for further details). Soon after, Emiliani embarked on the study of isotope stratigraphy of marine section La Castella in S-Italy, which was committed for research on earliest cold spells in search for the Plio-Quaternary boundary (see section 2.4). Emiliani's fundamental studies laid the groundwork for the development of marine isotope stratigraphy. 9 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ 10 Orombelli G. et al. (1817), the physicist known for the ’Venturi effect’ in fluid dynamics, calculated the volume of a block of ice necessary to float, supporting the pedestal of the ’Bronze Horseman‘, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. The pedestal was made from a giant boulder of Rapakivi granite, half embedded in a marshy ground near the city. Venturi concluded that in the past the large glaciers of the Alps could have pro- duced ‘pieces of ice swimming on the sea’, with a vol- ume sufficient to carry very large boulders. Catullo (1838), describing the Venetian provinces, made a distinction between ‘alluvial terrains (deposits even now forming in any part of the Earth)’ and the ‘more extended and higher diluvial terrains (deposits that look like formed by the same waters responsible of the tertiary deposits)’. Continuing this theme, Curioni (1844), in a review on the geology of Lombardy, mentioned ‘the erratic for- mation, scattered on the back of the mountains, largely accumulated on the hills and more widely on all the Po plain’. The large boulders of alpine rocks, lying at a great distance from their origin in the high mountains, beyond deep lakes, aroused the most passionate inves- tigations. At first it was imagined that they were carried here and there on an ancient ocean on floating ice. De Buch and De Beaumont thought they were dragged by the violence of enormous water currents, whilst the Swiss geologists Charpentier, Venetz, Agassiz recog- nised in them ‘the progressive motion, over vast re- gions, of glaciers pushing forward loose rocks and piling up them to form large dams or moraines’. Collegno (1847) defined the ‘alluvial terrains’ as ‘deposits formed by present causes with the same energy of today’, while the ‘diluvial terrains were formed by the same present- day processes, but temporarily powered by a much higher and presently unknown strength. These anoma- lous deposits were also named erratic terrains, to mean materials transported by agents at present no longer active or too weak where now we can see them’. Alt- hough Collegno was aware of the glacial theory devel- oped in the Alps by Jean-Pierre Perraudin, Ignaz Venetz and Jean de Charpentier in the first decades of the 19th century, and dramatically illustrated by Agassiz in his volume Études sur les glaciers (1840), he continued to support the idea that the erratic blocks were transported by ice rafts. In fact, although the glacial theory was rap- idly accepted by Buckland and Lyell, many geologists remained unconvinced for many more years. As De Mortillet (1861) mentioned, in the decade following the publication of the Agassiz’s book, several Italian and foreign students (Leblanc, Carrel, Gal, Guy- ot, Forbes, Coulomb, Studer, Zollikofer, Martins, Villa, Catullo, Parolini) observed and described erosional and depositional features on the southern side of the Alps and on their foothills that they interpreted as the evi- dence of the past presence of glaciers. The first truly important paper, ‘that opened the study of glacial phe- nomena in Italy’ (Taramelli 1903) was that by Martins and Gastaldi (1850, Fig. 1a) on the ”terrains superficiels de la vallèe du Pô, aux environs de Turin, comparés à ceux de la plaine Suisse”. These authors fully accepted the ‘glacial theory‘, correctly recognising the geological evidence for the glacial erosion, transport and deposi- tion. Among the glacial-erosional forms they described are: polished and striated rocks with glacial striae and grooves (“roches polies, striées et cannellées”), different systems of striae indicating successive stages of glacier extent with different flow directions, “roches mouton- nées” with asymmetric (stoss and lee) long profiles (indicating the direction and versus of glacier flow), stri- ated pebbles and blocks (“cailloux rayés”). The accumu- lation forms and glacial deposits described include: ter- minal moraines (“moraines latérales, moraines fronta- les” ), ground moraine (“moraines profondes”) with hum- mocky topography, supraglacial and subglacial debris, lodgement and ablation till (“moraine superficielle”), aligned erratic blocks on the valley sides, together indi- cating the past glacier limit. In addition, Martins & Gas- taldi (1850) recognized that the size of the lateral mo- raines was related to the height of ice-free valley slopes and to the size of the drainage basin, as well as the fact that the debris lithology was indicative of the rocks out- cropping on the side of the valley. They first described the past presence of glaciers in the Dora Riparia and Dora Baltea basins, the ice hav- ing flowed along the Susa and the Aosta valleys, ex- panding and terminating on the Po Plain with two pied- mont glaciers that formed, respectively, the terminal moraine systems (defined as morainic amphitheatres) of Rivoli and Ivrea. They clearly distinguisheded a se- quence of almost circular concentric moraines separat- ed by small lakes or peat bogs, that represent the maxi- mum advance and the recessional stages of the glacier. The high terminal moraine of the Dora Baltea glacier, named la Serra, was described as a ‘huge rampart with steep sides, particularly the inner one, projecting itself on the sky as a straight line lowering as it advances in the plain’. Since then la Serra has been considered one of the best preserved examples of a end moraine left by past glaciers in Italy. Martins & Gastaldi (1850) also interpreted the alpine diluvium as glaciofluvial (outwash) deposits, describing their relatiosnship with the glacial deposits: ‘when a glacier advances, it builds new end moraines on the diluvium…. when it melts down and retreats it abandons on the diluvium ground and ablation moraines’. In the following years many studies were devoted to the glacial deposits in Italy. For example, Villa (1857) recognised that ‘all the hills branching out from Erbusco towards Calino and Torbiato to Iseo represent the vari- ous terminal moraines left by a large glacier descending by the mountains beyond Lake Iseo’, as described with further details and represented in a sketch-map by de Mortillet (1859). Latterly, Omboni (1861a, Fig. 1b) de- scribed and mapped the concentric semi-circular hills just south of Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore as ancient moraines and attributed them to ancient glaciers of the Ticino and Toce valleys. In a short note, at much the same time, Paglia (1861, Fig. 1b) recognised the elongated hills, with a triangular section, made of ‘erratic terrain’, and forming concentric semi-circular alignments south of Lake Gar- da, as possible terminal moraines. He clearly mapped the more external arched moraine extending from Calci- nato to Castenedolo from the group of younger mo- raines between Castiglione dello Stiviere and the Oglio River. Further to the East, where the Tagliamento river flows from the Carnic Alps into the plain, Pirona (1861, Fig. 1b) described a sequence of concentric hills com- prising ‘pebbles of various size, many of them striated, mixed with gravel, sand and clay, with any sign of lacus- trine or fluvial stratification. At the surface of the hills, here and there large angular blocks made of various rock types are scattered’. He concluded that all these hills were terminal moraines produced by a huge an- cient glacier that flowed from the Carnic Alps. De Mortillet (1861) compiled a map of the ancient glaciers on the Italian sides of the Alps, shortly describ- ing, from west to east, all the drainage basins that host- ed large valley glaciers, many of them flowing into the plain and forming piedmont lobes. These last are docu- mented by the morainic amphitheatres of Rivoli, Ivrea, those south of lakes Orta, Maggiore, Lugano, Como, Iseo, Garda, and those of Piave and the Tagliamento rivers. Omboni (1861b), after a statement in favour of uniformitarianism (‘geologists have now adopted the method of studying the present phenomena to explain those happened in the past’), described the geological evidence left by glaciers in the present basins of the Ticino, Adda and Oglio rivers, including the great lakes at the foot of the central Alps. He paid particular atten- tion to the lithology of the erratic blocks, reconstructing the provenance of the different valley glaciers. He distin- guished the glacier of the Toce basin, branching to- wards the present Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore val- leys, the glacier of the Ticino basin flowing along the Lake Maggiore and western Lake Lugano valleys, and the Liro and Mera basins glacier merging with the Adda basin glacier and flowing with several interconnected branches along the valleys today occupied by the lakes Lugano, Como and Lecco. All these glaciers reached the northern margin of the river Po plain where, at the foot of the Alps, where they formed a complex set of coalescent piedmont lobes. A sketch-map showing the geographical distribution of seven different groups of lithotypes present in the glacial deposits of Lombardy was a first example of a study of provenance of the gla- cial sediments. In the second half of the 19th century, the studies on the ‘glacial period’ by Abbot Antonio Stoppani (1867, 1873, 1880, Fig. 1b) had particular influence in Italy. In 1873, Stoppani published the textbook on stratigraphy mentioned in the Foreward and, few years later, a book on the Ice Age in Italy (Stoppani, 1880, L’Era Neozoica). He considered the Ice Age as one single glacial interval immediately following the deposition of the Pliocene marine beds, when the Pliocene sea was still present in the Po valley at the foot of the Alps. As depicted on the cover of the book, he imagined the Alpine glaciers de- scending into fjords, where they released icebergs, while reindeer, bears, marmots and pachyderms inhabit- ed the ice-free areas. This idea was based on the dis- covery (a few years earlier) of glacial deposits contain- ing Pliocene marine shells in the Como and Ivrea mo- rainic amphitheatres. He interpreted these deposits as glaciomarine in origin. He considered (and figured in a map) the morainic amphitheatres south of the Alps as directly deposited at the margin of the Pliocene Adriatic gulf of the Mediterranean that covered the entire present Po plain. This hypothesis was discussed and rejected by Sordelli (1875), Omboni (1877) and by Gastaldi, Tara- melli and Baretti who considered the fossil remains as reworked Pliocene ‘warm’ water marine fauna. 3.2. Glacial and interglacial periods During the last three decades of the 19th century new more detailed studies were undertaken on the glaci- genic deposits of northern Italy by Taramelli, Sacco, Cozzaglio and Stella. They initially recognised deposits of 2 - 3 discrete successive glaciations. Taramelli (1870, 1875, 1881) mapped and described the glacial deposits of Friuli, including the Tagliamento piedmont glacier system, and in 1903 he published a geological map of the Prealps and of Lake Maggiore, Lake Lugano and Lake Como morainic amphitheatres. These features occur between the Ticino and Adda rivers, where they represent three successive glaciations. In his map he distinguished: 1) post-glacial alluvial deposits, 2) fluvio- glacial (recent Diluvium) and glacial deposits of the last glaciation, 3) weathered fluvio-glacial and glacial depos- its (middle Diluvium locally glacial), deeply weathered fluvio-glacial and glacial deposits (ancient Diluvium lo- cally glacial), together indicative of three glaciations. Subsequently, Sacco mapped and described the mo- rainic amphitheatres of Rivoli, Lake Maggiore, Lake Como, Lake Iseo, Lake Garda and those of the Veneto region, in a sequence of publications between 1886 and 1898. In these articles he failed to distinguishing mo- raines of the different glaciations but he did recognise three orders of terraces. Shortly afterwards, Cozzaglio (1891,1902) studied the morainic amphitheatres of Lake Garda and Lake Iseo. Stella (1895) summarised the knowledge obtained by Sacco, Taramelli, Cozzaglio and himself from the surveys made for the Geological map of Italy 1:100,000.They clearly distinguished between the post- glacial fluvial deposits (Alluvium) from the older Quater- nary deposits (Diluvium) on the base of palaeontological and hydrographical-morphological characters. In turn, the Diluvium was divided into three units (three terrac- es), the recent, the middle and the ancient Diluvium. This was based on the basis of topography, morphology, weathering and stratigraphical relationships of the units. The recent Diluvium forms the lower outwash terrace and is connected to the well-preserved moraines of the amphitheatres; the deeply weathered and rubefied an- cient Diluvium, forms the remnants of the highest terrace with a gently undulating surface and locally including glacial facies; the middle Diluvium forms the remnants of the interposed, weathered terrace, and instead was interpreted as representing an interglacial accumulation. The short paper by Penck et al. (1894, Fig. 1b) “Le system glaciaire des Alps”, that anticipated the classic Penck & Brückner (1909) synthesis, led the way to new 11 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ 12 Orombelli G. et al. studies on the alpine glaciations also in Italy. The article clearly described and figured the internal structure and surface appearance of the Alpine glacial depositional systems, demonstrating the distinction between the glacial and fluvioglacial formations and their “relation intimes”. The main criteria to distinguish the deposits of successive glaciations were summarised as: the degree of surface weathering (including mention of the ferretto of Lombardy, see below), the presence and number of loess/lehm strata and the morpho-stratigraphical rela- tionships of the deposits (superposition versus emboîte- ment). On the basis of these criteria ‘it was necessary to admit that the three morphostratigraphic units (Deckenschotter, Hochterrassenschotter and Niederter- rassenschotter) and their moraines were indicative of three successive glaciations’. For the Quaternary studies, the 20th century opened with Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter, the three volume compendium by Penck & Brückner (1909) summarised their research lasting decades, that became the para- digm in glacial geology for the next 50 years. Based on the morphological evidence in the Alpine foothills, the authors described a glacial system composed of three major elements: a basin left by a glacier tongue, a belt of enclosing terminal moraines and an outwash fan and plain complex external to the moraines (Fiebig & Preusser, 2008). Indeed, they recognised four stacked main outwash terraces, each connected to glacial de- posits, attributed to four successive glaciations (termed Günz, Mindel, Riss, Würm), separated by interglacial periods during which the previous deposits were incised and weathered under warm/mild climatic conditions. The largest part of Penck & Brückner’s third vol- ume is dedicated to the Italian Quaternary glacial de- posits from the Piedmont to the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. The largest morainic amphitheatres are de- scribed with the differentiation (in the sections and maps) of three main units: Jungmoränen (W), Alt- moränen (R), Ferrettomoränen (Mf) and their related outwash terraces. In the Ivrea morainic amphitheatre, a section across the large composite ’La Serra’ moraine, shows the innermost part attributed to Würm, the largest part to Riss, while at the outmost border buried glacial deposits are attributed to the Mindel. In the Lake Maggi- ore and Lake Como, Würm, Riss and Ferretto/Mindel amphitheatres moraines with their outwash terraces are clearly identified. The ferretto is the deeply weathered topmost part of the fluvioglacial and glacial deposits attributed to the Mindel-age glaciation, developed during the (supposed) long Mindel/Riss interglacial. Locally evidence of more ferretto surfaces of different ages were also observed. In contrast, in the Garda amphithe- atre only the most external moraine on the west side was attributed to the Riss, and all the other moraines to the Würm, while in sections along the bank of Chiese River glacial and fluvioglacial deposits were assigned to the Mindel and Günz glaciations. The influence of Penck & Brückner’s work on the Italian studies in the following decades remained sub- stantial. On the official geological map 1:100,000, Sheet Ivrea, mapped by Franchi, Mattirolo, Novarese and Stel- la (1912) in 1890-1910, two glaciogenic units are distin- guished in the Ivrea morainic amphitheatre: 1- Würmian moraines, connected to the recent Diluvium outwash terrace and 2- weathered ancient moraines (pre- Würmian), connected to the weathered ancient Diluvium outwash terraces (“ferretto”). On the Aosta Sheet, sur- veyed by Mattirolo et al. (1912), the glacial deposits are indicated as Würmian, post-Würmian and recent mo- raines. Sacco (1919) accepted the four glaciations scheme and in 1927 recognised three glaciations in the Ivrea morainic amphitheatre, equating them to the last three of Penck & Brückner. Likewise, Cozzaglio (1933) adopted the four-fold glaciation scheme for the Garda morainic amphitheatre, accepting the stratigraphical evidence for the Günz glaciation along the Chiese River, albeit attributing the most external moraine on the west side to the Mindel while recognising an outer part at- tributed to the Riss and an inner part attributed to the Würm glaciation in the rest of the amphitheatre. Glacial and glacio-lacustrine deposits attributed to the Günz glaciation were reported by Nangeroni (1929, 1950) and by Riva (1942) in Lombardy. Haupt (1938) studied the glaciation in the Berga- masque Alps with a detailed map of the extent of the ice cover. A beautiful colour map of the extent of the last glaciation in the Italian Alps (and the Northern Apen- nines) was drawn by Bruno Castiglioni (1940). 3.3 - The full acceptance of Penck & Brückner’s scheme, the Milankovitch astronomical cycles and the emergence of multiple glaciations Following the Second World War a number of studies on the morainic amphitheatres was accom- plished, based upon the Penck & Brückner scheme. Nangeroni (1954a) described the glacigenic deposits south of Lake Maggiore, Lake Lugano and south-west of Lake Como, formed by the network of interconnected Pleistocene glaciers descending from the Toce, Ticino and Adda drainage basins. Pracchi (1954) and Nangeroni (1954b) described the glacial deposits that can be seen along the two branches of Lake Como, while Riva (1957) mapped and described the morainic systems and outwash terraces south of Lake Como between the Olona and Adda rivers. Finally Vecchia (1954) described the Lake Iseo morainic amphitheatre. In a short summary of the five studies Nangeroni (1954c) concluded that Penck and Brückner’s last three glaciations could be clearly distinguished on the basis of the morphology and surface weathering of three mo- raine systems and outwash terraces. Evidence of the Günz glaciation could only be found in deep sections, based on stratigraphiccriterial position. The maximum extent of glaciers decreased from Mindel, to the Riss and ultimately to the Würm glaciations. On the slopes of the Como and in the Iseo glacial troughs three different moraine systems could be distinguished from top down- wards: 1- scattered erratics and residual moraine patch- es, locally deeply weathered; 2 - terminal morainic ridges; 3 - terminal ’morainic terraces‘. Long profiles of major valley glaciers could be reconstructed for their ple glaciations of the Pleistocene that were subsequent- ly recognised in the deep-sea deposits and the loess sequences. 3.4. Late-glacial and Holocene glacier fluctuations By the end of the 19th century, attention was also payed to the geological evidence of Late Glacial and Holocene glacier fluctuations within the great Alpine valleys and near the front of the largest present-day glaciers. For example, Novarese (1915, 1916) described evidence for the post-Würmian stadials in the Aosta valley. These intervals were named Chambave, Ayma- ville and Courmayeur and correlated with the Bühl, Gschnitz and Daun stadials identified by Penck & Brück- ner (1909). Nangeroni (1930) described three stadial moraines in the Val Malenco (Sondrio), reconstructing the relative glacier extents and snow-line altitudes, and their tentative correlation to the Penck and Brückner‘s stadials. A few other studies on Late-Glacial moraines were published in the following decades, generally of only local relevance. Of particular significance are two studies by G.B. Castiglioni (1961, 1964) on the Late- Glacial moraines of the Mount Adamello-Presanella group and of the Dolomites. Following examination of the available study methods at the time (in the absence of numerical dating), the author concluded that three stadials could be identified in the two mountain areas. This was based on their average snow-line depression, compared to that at the beginning of the 20th century, which he correlated with the Sciliar, Gschnitz and Daun stadials, the locally an innermost moraine being attribut- ed to the Egesen Stadial. 3.5. The Apennines Beyond the Alps the presence of Quaternary glaci- ers on the Apennine mountains was first suggested from the Apuan Alps (Tuscany) by Cocchi (1867, 1872b), Stoppani (1872), and De Stefani (1874), on the Gran Sasso (Abruzzi) by Berruti & St. Robert (1871) and Di S. Robert (1884), on the northern Apennines by De Stefani (1887) and on the Southern Apennines by De Lorenzo (1892, Fig. 1b). These early reports were soon followed by more detailed descriptions by many other authors. Northern Apennines and the Apuan Alps - Sac- co (1893) presented the first reconstruction of the glacier occurence along the northern sector of the Apennines and on the Apuan Alps. Because of the lower altitude with respect to the Alps, they were mainly small glaciers on the north-facing side of the mountain chain, only a few valley glaciers reaching a length of few kilometres, as in Val Parma and in Val Cedra. Sacco (1893) mapped the occurrence and the extent of glacial depos- its from north-west (Bobbio and S. Stefano d’Aveto) to south-east (Mount Cimone and Corno alle Scale), while De Stefani (1891a) mapped a dozen ancient glaciers with the glacial cirques, as well as the extent of the glac- iers and of their moraines on the Apuan Alps. Many other studies followed in the first half of the 20th century, among which were those by Losacco, who published a definitive memoir in 1949 and a revised maximum extent and elevation, and for the subsequent recessional stages. An extensive and original revision of the Quater- nary of the Po plain is contained in Gabert’s (1962) PhD thesis: “Les plaines occidentales du Pô et leurs pied- monts - Piémont, Lombardie occidentale et centrale”. This author studied the evolution of Po plain and its margins from the Miocene, from the Tanaro to the Adda river, and the Pleistocene piedmont-glacier morainic systems from the Dora Riparia valley to the Lecco lake. He recognised clear evidence of three major glacial advances which he equated to the Mindel, Riss and Würm glaciations. He recognized that the Würmian mo- raine systems are much better and extensively pre- served than those of the Rissian. He also demonstrated that the main level of the plain (i.e. the Würmian out- wash terrace) is linked to the last (Würmian) morainic arches and that the equivalent plain extends almost uninterrupted from the Stura di Demonte to the Adda river. Furthermore, the Pleistocene piedmont glaciers of the southern slope of the Alps advanced much less over the plain than those north of the Alps. Finally the mo- raines of successive glaciations are closer together in Italy rather than being more widely spaced as in Bavar- ia: the Würm moraines directly abutting those from the Riss. From the late 1930s for more than three decades Sergio Venzo devoted himself to studying and mapping the Quaternary continental deposits of Northern Italy. In particular are to be mentioned here his studies of the lacustrine sections of Leffe (Venzo, 1950, Fig. 1c) and Pianico (Venzo, 1955) in the Bergamo pre-Alps, the geologic maps of the Lecco (Venzo, 1948) and of the Garda morainic amphitheatres (Venzo 1957, 1961, 1965) where he distinguished and mapped numerous groups of end moraines and related outwash terraces on the base of morphology and of the top soil sequenc- es. He tried to correlate the succession of numerous palaeoclimatic changes - recognized in lithology and pollen diagrams of the long lacustrine sections and in the stratigraphic, morphologic and soil/palaeosol evi- dence of the Pleistocene glacigenic deposits at the foot of the Italian Alps - with the insolation astronomical cy- cles calculated by Milankovitch (1941). In the pre-Mindel lacustrine sequence at Leffe, Venzo (1950) and Lona (1950, Fig. 1c) recognised five cold phases, that they correlated with three Donau and two Günz stadials, while in the Lecco and Garda amphi- theatres Venzo (1948, 1965) distinguished on the base of morphology and weathering of moraines and outwash terraces the evidence of three glaciations, each subdi- vided into two-three cold phases (stadials). - The addi- tion of three cold phases of the Donau glaciation (Eberl, 1930), as proposed by Milankovitch (1941), ten minima of the insolation curve could be correlated with the four- fold Penck & Brückner (1909) scheme. This was deemed possible provided each glaciation was split into two-three cold phases, assumed to represent stadials. In the absence of independent time control, these corre- lations were hypothetical, but the suggested large num- ber of cold phases anticipated the quasi-periodic multi- 13 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ 14 Orombelli G. et al. edition in 1982. Losacco (1949, 1982) carefully de- scribed and mapped the geological and morphological evidence (glacial cirques, glacial deposits and terminal moraines) of 59 glaciers present in thirteen mountain groups, from the Ligurian to the Tuscan-Emilian Apen- nines. All the glacial deposits were attributed to the Würmian glaciation. For each palaeoglacier, the expo- sure, the maximum length, the maximum and minimum altitudes, and the snow-line altitude were reported. Only about ten valley glaciers reached a length of 5 km and only one was 8 km long (Parma valley), with a maximum thickness of 250 m. At least three recessional phases could be recognised in the majority of the mountain groups studied and recorded by nested terminal mo- raines in the highest parts of the valleys. By the third recessional phase the glaciers were almost all restricted to cirque tongues. Losacco (1949, 1982) gave the alti- tude of the glacial deposits, of the snow-line and the snow-line rise with respect to the glacier maximum for each of the three phases. The reconstructed snow-line altitude (the average of the maximum elevation of enclosing mountains and lowest altitude of glacial deposits) during the maximum glacier extent raised from north-west to south-east from about 1300 m to 1600 m, while during the third reces- sional phase (correlated to the Bühl Stadial) was 250- 320 m higher. The low altitude of the Late Pleistocene snow-line on the Northern Apennines was attributed to high annual precipitation (in the first half of the 20th cen- tury this exceeded 2000 mm/yr). A synthetic view of the distribution of Quaternary glaciers on the Northern Ap- ennines and the Apuan Alps is published as a map by B. Castiglioni (1940). Central Apennines - Following the first reports by Berruti & St. Robert (1871) and Di S. Robert (1884) on the past presence of glaciers on the Gran Sasso, many authors in the first half of the 20th century described the geomorphological and geological evidence of Pleisto- cene glaciers on the mountain groups of the central Apennines: Hassert , Sacco, Almagià , Crema, Klebers- berg on the Abruzzi Apennines, Dainelli, Franchi, Biéler- Chatelan, Sestini, Beneo on the Simbruini- Ernici Moun- tains and Klebersberg on the Sibillini Mountains. Suter (1939) carried out systematic studies of the Central Apennines for a decade. He concluded (Suter, 1940) that all the mountains higher than 2000 m were occupied by glaciers, as indicated by the presence of glacial cirques and moraines. He recorded over 200 cirques, mainly on the north and north-east-facing slopes. The floor of the cirques occurs at altitude of 1800-1900 m on the north-facing slopes, and 2200-2400 m on the south-facing slopes. A few U-shaped valleys are present, their floor reaching 150-300 m wide, with steep walls and trimlines marked by knickpoints. Well preserved terminal moraines can be found on the high plateaux including Campo Imperatore, Piano di Ovindoli, Piano Aremogna etc. In a few valleys two or three re- cessional moraines may occur. Suter (1940) considered that all the moraines were deposited during the last glaciation (Würmian) and that older, more weathered moraines could not be observed. The size attained by glaciers on the Gran Sasso, Mount, Velino, Mount Greco and Mount Meta was 5 km or more (with a maximum of 10 km at Campo Impera- tore), on the Sibillini, Simbruini, Terminillo and Majella mountains glaciers were 3.5 km long, while on the Ma- tese, Mount Morrone, Sirente, Mount Cornacchia and Mount d’Ocre they were less than 3 km in length. These glaciers were 50-100 m thick, reaching a maximum of 200 m. The estimated snow-line altitude on the north- ern, eastern and western slopes was on average at 1750-1800 m, whilst on the southern slopes it stood at 2200-2300 m. Two to three recessional phases were found and tentatively correlated on the base of the rising of the snow-line to the Bühl and Gschnitz stadials. With- in this latter stadial, glaciers disappeared from the Apen- nines, except on the Gran Sasso and Majella. Based on the available knowledge, the distribution and the extent of glaciers from north to south, on the Umbria-Marche, Lazio and Abruzzo Apennines, were represented on the 1:1,200,000 map ’The Central Apen- nines during the Glacial Period‘ compiled by Sestini (1940). After the Second World War, the evidence for pre- Würmian glacial deposits, hypothesised by Suter (1940), was reported by Demangeot (1963) from the Gran Sasso, and by Pfeffer (1967) from the Velino mas- sif, both spreads being attributed to the Riss Glaciation. Southern Apennines - Few studies were devoted to the glacial features on the Southern Apennines be- fore the second half of the 20th century. De Lorenzo (1892) was the first to notice the evidence of an ancient glacier near Lagonegro (Basilicata). He described a terminal moraine in the Mount Sirino Group, represent- ed by ‘a great amount of mud chaotically including large and small blocks and pebbles of various size deriving from the surrounding calcareous and silicic rocks’. He saw many polished and striated pebbles in the moraine and rounded, polished and grooved rocks on the up- stream flanks of the valley. With a sketch map and a section, he reconstructed the past valley glacier reach- ing about 3 km in length. Two further ancient glaciers were recognised from their terminal moraines by De Lorenzo (1893) in the same mountain group. The snow- line altitude interpreted from the altitude of the glacial cirques was estimated at 1800 m. Indications of the past presence of glaciers on the Mount Pollino (2248 m) massif, at the boundary between Calabria and Basilica- ta, were described by Biasutti (1923) and Klebersberg (1932). According to Suter (1939, 1940) the average alti- tude of the snowline at the Würmian maximum along the Italian peninsula was at 1500-1600 m on the Northern Apennines, at 1350 m on the Apuan Alps, at 1750-1800 m on the Central Apennines, rising to 1900-2000 m on the Southern Apennines. According to Trevisan (1940) the snowline rose from north to south with the increas- ing temperature along 5° of latitude, and from west to east as a consequence of decreasing precipitation from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic side. A map of the Würmi- an snowlines in the Mediterranean, compiled by Mes- serli (1967),shows their pattern along the Italian penin- sula, substantially corresponding to Suter’s conclusions. 4. CONTINENTAL QUATERNARY DEPOSITS: PALAEONTOLOGY AND CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY 4.1. Palaeontological research from the late 18th century to the first half of the 20th century The earliest accounts of invertebrate and verte- brate fossil records date back to the Renaissance peri- od. Regarding the continental domain, the remains of Quaternary terrestrial mammals caught the attention of natural object collectors and scholars from various cul- tural backgrounds, and at much the same time the or- ganic nature of fossils was first recognised (e.g., Boc- caccio, Leonardo, Colonna, and Fracastoro) and that natural processes rather than the Great Flood were responsible for their accumulation (e.g., Moro, Volta, and Beccari). Two of the most notable examples are Ferdinando I de' Medici's rich medicea Granducal collection of mam- mals from the Upper Valdarno (originally created in Flor- ence and then moved to Pisa) (cfr. Cioppi & Dominici, 2010), and the report, at the end of the 16th century, of elephant bones (Mammuthus meridionalis) at San Gio- vanni Valdarno by the Pisan naturalist Andrea Cesal- pino. Later, Francesco II de' Medici entrusted Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, a collector of natural objects, with the task of reorganising the collection's remains kept at Pisa (Targioni Tozzetti, 1754). He not only played a crucial role in the analysis of the Upper Valdarno fossil mam- mal remains, highlighting their significance for compre- hending the past flora and fauna life, but he also provid- ed a thorough description of the deposits (some strati- graphical sections and lithologies) and their "natural products" (Targioni Tozzetti, 1752). However, palaeontological studies, in which geo- logical, palaeontological, and sometimes archaeological aspects were often intimately connected, multiplied by the end of the 18th and during the 19th centuries. The multidisciplinarity of interests was a common trait of many of the first scholars (e.g., naturalists, geologists, physicians, and natural object collectors) who dealt with mammalian fossil remains. Examples include, among others, Bartolomeo Gastaldi (1818-1879), interested in geology, glaciology, palaeontology, and palaethnology; Francesco Bassani (1853 -1916), geologist, palaeontol- ogist, ichthyologist, seismologist, and volcanologist; and the engineer Romolo Meli (1852 -1921), whose scientific activity encompassed geology, palaeontology, malacol- ogy, and philology, as well as bibliographic studies. Although there were several studies on Pleisto- cene marine invertebrates, particularly molluscs such as those from the Monte Mario Plio-Pleistocene sequence (Ponzi & Meli, 1887; Cerulli Irelli, 1905, 1907-1916), the study of mammals received a huge boost after the publi- cation of the fundamental writings of the zoologist, biolo- gist, and naturalist George Cuvier (1769-1832), consid- ered the founder of vertebrate palaeontology (Cuvier, 1812, 1821-1824, 1836). The French scholar was in contact with Italian scientists, some of whom engaged him in the investigation of Pleistocene animal remains from the Italian peninsula and Sardinia. For instance, positive discussions and exchanges with Georges Cuvi- er encouraged Giovanni Fabbroni (1752-1822), a chem- ist and naturalist who investigated the collections of mammals from Upper Valdarno, to become more inter- ested in palaeontology (Cioppi & Dominici, 2010). During the 19th century, outstanding studies of the mammalian remains from the Valdarno Basini, as well as from other Tuscany basins (see e.g., Forsith Major, 1877, 1881, 1890; Ristori, 1897), led to the description and creation of new species still crucial for the systemat- ics, biochronology, and evolutionary history studies of large Eurasian Pleistocene mammals. For instance, the naturalist and geologist Filippo Nesti (1780-1849) pro- vided the first palaeontological description of proboscid- eans (mastodonts and elephants) from the Upper Val- darno Basin (Nesti, 1808). Moreover, he created the well -known species ’Elephas‘ meridionalis (recte Mammu- thus meridionalis) (the first elephant species to be re- ported in the Eurasian Early Pleistocene), based on the rich elephant Valdarno material he had discovered and described (Nesti, 1825). Later, Weithofer (1893) careful- ly described the proboscideans remains from Valdarno. When, in 1860, Igino Cocchi (1827-1913, Fig. 1b) became curator of the palaeontological collections of the Physic and Natural History Museum in Florence, the study of Valdarno mammals had a further stimulus. The scientist not only studied some specimens (e.g., the Macaca remains, Cocchi, 1872a) and created the new well-known species Equus stenonis (Cocchi, 1867), but also enriched the collections with several acquisitions, including skulls of the large sabretoothed cats Megan- tereon cultridens and Homotherium crenatidens, the latter genus erected by Emilio Fabrini (1890) for material from Upper Valdarno (Cioppi & Dominici 2010). Fabrini (1890) and then Domenico Del Campana (1915-1916) mentioned, under the name Leopardus arvernensis, the other large felid from the Early Pleisto- cene of Tuscany, Panthera gombaszoegensis. Del Cam- pana also studied the Pleistocene canids from Tuscany, revising the species already defined by Fosyth Major (1877), Canis etruscus and Canis falconeri (= Xenocyon falconeri). The researcher created the species Canis arnensis for the remains of a smaller dog from Upper Vardarno that he had found and described, and he also created a new running hyaena species, Lycaena lunen- sis (recte Chasmaporthetes lunensis), for the material from Val di Magra (Del Campana, 1914). The palaeon- tologist also studied the fossil record, mainly the avifau- na, from Apuane caves, including the rich mammalian material from the Equi cave and Tecchia (Del Campana, 1954). Throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th cen- turies, several Italian and foreign scholars undertook geo-palaeontological surveys and investigations in cen- tral Italy, or they recorded and investigated recently dis- covered Quaternary mammal remains (e.g., among oth- ers, Battaglia, Bleicher, Ceselli, Clerici, Indes, Lartet, Napoli, Neviani, Rellini, Terrigi, and Verneuil). Here, we 15 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ would like to recognise the researchers that offered fascinating information on the Pleistocene deposits and their mammal fossil record of the Roman Basin, includ- ing the Rome metropolitan region, where vertebrate fossil remains were reported since the 16th century (e.g. Mazzaella, de Mancony, Lancisi and Calmet) and Morozzo cited the discovery of an elephant fossil in the early 19th century (Kotsakis & Barisone, 2008). The biologist Giuseppe Ponzi (1805-1855), thought to have graduated in medicine, devoted himself to geological and palaeontological investigations. A consequence of his notable studies of the Roman and Tyrrhenian coast area cartography and geology, he has been considered the founder of the Roman geological research school. As regards palaeontology, he revised the mammalian remains of some collections, studied new material, and discussed taxonomic and systematic issues in some cases. He compiled the first inventory of the Roman mammalian associations, attempting to gather them into four chronologically homogeneous groups. He then proposed an assessment of their chronostratigraphic order, tentatively placing them from the Miocene- Pliocene to the modern epoch (cf., among several oth- ers, Ponzi, 1862a, 1862b, 1875, 1878, 1883). Giuseppe Augusto Tuccimei (1851-1915), a physi- cian, canon lawyer and naturalist, was a pioneer in geo- logical and palaeontological research. In his studies of large and small Plio-Pleistocene mammals, he mostly described Villafranchian species, not only reporting the remains found during field surveys and excavations, but also providing a systematic review of some taxonomic groups (Tuccimei, 1889). Romolo Meli (see above) studied the geology, the stratigraphical assessment, and the palaeontological content of various Plio-Pleistocene Latium deposits. His research activity was particularly devoted to the Upper Aniene Valley, the Roman Campagna, and the Rome metropolitan area, where he first recognized the signifi- cance of the Pleistocene settlement of Sedia del Diavolo (Meli, 1882). The naturalist Alessandro Portis (1853-1931), who had carried out significant geological surveys in northern and central Italy since 1891, largely devoted himself to the study of the Quaternary deposits of the Campagna Romana and their mammalian content (Portis, 1893- 1896), mostly describing the remains of elephants, car- nivores, hippopotamuses, and large and medium-sized artiodactyls, also dealing with systematic issues (Portis, 1920). He expanded time by time his research activity to other Latium areas, such as the Oricola-Carsoli basin, where he found several bones of an elephant skeleton, showing in his opinion some similarities with both M. meridionalis and ‘Elephas’ antiquus (recte Palaeoloxo- don antiquus) (Portis, 1893-1896, volumes 1 and 2), to which the elephant was then referred by De Angelis d'Ossat (1956). Enrico Clerici, the engineer (1862-1938), geologist and naturalist, conducted several surveys and applied innovative methodological laboratory approaches to support his geological, palaeontological and mineralogi- cal researches. Together with relevant studies on Qua- ternary invertebrates (mainly malacofauna, plants and diatoms), he studied mammal remains from most of the taxonomical groups, not only from a systematics point of view, but also considering their palaeoenvironmental context (e.g., Clerici, 1888, 1932, and references there- in). The versatility of the geologist Gioacchino De An- gelis d'Ossat (1865-1957) is demonstrated by the breadth of his study interests, which included palaeon- tology, philosophy and geology. His research activity was mainly focused on Latium and the Roman basin (for example, his study of the Aniene Upper Valley). Among his palaeontological studies, those related to the Quater- nary are mainly concerned with mammals. After his ju- venile work on the woolly rhinoceros (De Angelis d'Ossat, 1895), he mostly studied proboscideans, espe- cially P. antiquus. The study of elephants and the Velia hill's deposits (via dei Fori imperiali, Rome) (De Angelis d'Ossat, 1897) is among the most well-known. It pro- vides an extraordinary and detailed geo-palaeontological documentation of an area that is now completely urban- ised. In the 19th century and until the 1960s, several geologists and palaeontologists (e.g., Airaghi, Anelli, Cornalia, Forsyth Major, Gastaldi, Mariani, De Stefano, De Angelis D'Ossat, Portis, Sacchi Vialli, Stoppani, Zuffardi) dealt with North Italian Quaternary mammal remains. Some of these fossil remains were retrieved from alluvial deposits of the main rivers; others were found in caves and occasionally in glacial deposits. The initial research activities carried out in the lignite depos- its of the Leffe basin are among the most relevant. Since the first report by Balsamo Crivelli (1840, 1842), studies of the Leffe large mammals (particularly elephants and rhinoceroses) by various researchers (e.g., Airaghi, 1914; Caffi, 1934; Vialli, 1956) have highlighted their significance for the biochronology of the Early Pleisto- cene mammalian fauna from Italy. Regarding Southern Italy, a first inventory of mam- malian remains was provided by Flores (1895). Various researchers reported mammal remains found in cave archaeological deposits (e.g., Blanc G.A.,1920, 1928; Botti, 1874,1890; Graziosi & Maviglia, 1946; Mochi, 1911, Rellini, 1920), while palaeontological and archae- ological research of significance was carried out by De Lorenzo and D'Erasmo (e.g., De Lorenzo & D'Erasmo, 1927, 1932). Giuseppe De Lorenzo (1871-1951), geologist, palaethnologist and palaeontologist but also a botanist, philosopher and poet, boosted the development of geo- logical studies in southern Italy, especially in Basilicata. However, he carried out research throughout Italy, main- ly dealing with volcanology but also with glaciology. His palaeontological studies mostly concerned the study of southern Italy's straight-tusked elephants and their con- temporaneity with the Palaeolithic man. The pre-eminent research activity of the naturalist Geremia D'Erasmo (1887-1962) was related to fossil fishes, for which he became a well-known specialist. He also conducted extensive research on southern Italian mammals, including hippopotamouses, and carefully 16 Orombelli G. et al. studied fossil proboscideans, some of which he discov- ered in the Sele and Liri basins. He discussed the con- temporary presence of Palaeolithic man in those territo- ries, as the numerous artifacts found both in the fossilif- erous deposits and elsewhere document. In the first summary on elephants he published in collaboration with De Lorenzo (De Lorenzo & D'Erasmo, 1927), D'Erasmo discussed the belonging to P. antiquus of various remains of proboscideans and attributed some remains from Abruzzi and Lucania to M. meridionalis. In the 1950s, he discovered and described the skull of a young straight-tusked elephant from the well-known Pignataro Interamna site (Montcharmont Zei & D'Erasmo, 1955). 4.2. The earliest studies of the endemic fauna of the two major islands, Sicily and Sardinia Francesco Anca and Gaetano Giorgio Gemellaro were two of the most influential Sicilian researchers. Anca, an agronomist and zoologist, regarded as the father of Sicilian Palaeontology, was particularly active in the study of the Quaternary mammals from Sicily, notably those present in ossiferous breccias and cave deposits (e.g., Anca, 1860). Gemellaro, a physician and naturalist best known for his research on Mesozoic in- vertebrates and squalodonts, also studied mammals found in Pleistocene cave deposits (Gemellaro, 1866). The collaboration of the two scholars led to the first at- tribution of fossil Sicilian elephants to dwarf endemic species (Anca & Gemellaro, 1867).The dwarf elephants are the most significant and intriguing of the Sicilian large mammal endemic species a result of the morpho- logical and dimensional variety of their outstanding fossil record. Cupani (1713) in the early 18th century was the first to mention, fossil elephant remains, i.e., a tooth (Fig. 1a), but he did not recognise their actual nature. During the 19th century, various scholars described Sicilian dwarf elephants, enhancing knowledge of their diversity (e.g., in chronological succession, Scinà, Anca, Gemellaro, Minà Palumbo, Dalla Rosa, Doderlein, Stöhr, Pohlig, De Gregorio, etc.) (Palombo et al., 2021 and references therein). These studies represented a substantial source for the seminal Vaufrey's study of the Mediterranean dwarf elephant taxonomy and evolution (Vaufrey, 1929). The Sardinian Pleistocene vertebrate fauna has caught researchers' interest since the discovery of en- demic mammalian remains in the early 19th century. The first surveys of Quaternary deposits on the island and studies of their fossil content were carried out by the German anatomist and physiologist Rudolf Wagner (1805-1864, Fig. 1a). He created the first Sardinian en- demic species, i.e. Prolagus sardus, for the remains of a large lagomorph that are extremely abundant in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene Sardinia deposits (Wagner, 1829). In the same period, General Alberto La Marmora, during his exploratory trip throughout Sardinia, collected vertebrate fossils from various sites, including the ossif- erous breccias of Monreale-Bonaria (Cagliari). The mammalian remains found at the site were entrusted for study to the Pisan physician Cesare Studiati (1821- 1894), who in 1857 erected the new genus and the new species Cynotherium sardous for some dental remains and an incomplete mandible of a small canid (Studiati, 1857), with uncertain and debated phyletic relationships (cfr. Zedda et al., 2022 and references therein). Forsyth Major was the primary researcher on the Quaternary Sardinian vertebrate fauna in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He conducted new surveys and studied mammalian remains either recently discov- ered or from old collections. The Scottish scientist creat- ed the species ’Elephas lamarmorae’ (recte Mammuthus lamarmorai), based on an almost complete skeleton from the Funtana Morimenta area (Gonnesa) (the first discovered Sardinian elephant) that Acconci had already described in 1881 (Forsyth Major, 1883). In 1882, he also created the species ’Arvicola’ henseli (recte Micro- tus henseli) for a large arvicolid found in an unknown Corsican locality and Enhydrictis galictoides, based on a large endemic Galictini remains found in the Pleistocene deposits of Monte S. Giovanni (Forsyth Major, 1901). Reinhold Friedrich Hensel, a German naturalist, described the remains of a shrew from the Monreale Bonaria breccias as Sorex similis (= Asoriculus similis) In the 1850s, as well as a new murid species, Mus or- thodon (= Rhagamys orthodon), whose provenance from the same deposits is unknown. The French geologist and palaeontologist Charles Jean Julien Depéret carried out some research in the Corso-Sardinia Massif and created in 1897 the well- known species "Cervus (Eucladoceros)" cazioti (recte Praemegaceros cazioti), a common component of the Late Plestocene Sardinian fauna assemblages, based on a few antler and mandible fragments from the Nonza cave (Corsica) (Depéret, 1897). At the beginning of the 20th century, Emile George Dehaut conducted some surveys and investigated the Capo Figari (Olbia) breccia, finding several vertebrate remains. The French palaeontologist erected the spe- cies ’Antilope melonii‘ (recte Nesogoral meloni) for the skull of a small bovid partially embedded in a hard brec- cia matrix (Dehaut, 1911). The peculiar characteristics of most of the Capo Figari remains hamper the possibility of firmly recognising the morphological traits of their continental ancestor. This is the case, for instance, of a large fragment of a small skull that Dehaut ascribed to a primate, ’Ophthalmomegas lamarmorae‘, while it be- longs to a small endemic owl, Bubo insularis. In the Ear- ly Pleistocene the Capo Figari promontory was actually inhabited by an endemic dwarf macaca, as documented by the find of a lower molar (Dehaut, 1914) and espe- cially by the material collected by Forsith Major during his systematic excavations. The Italian palaeontologist Augusto Azzaroli (Fig. 1d) studied a well preserved skull and created for the Capo Figari cercopithecide the new species Macaca majori (Azzaroli, 1946). Since the second half of the 20th century, new studies and discoveries have notably enhanced our knowledge of the Pleistocene insular mammalian fauna from Sardinia and Sicily (e.g., Palombo 2018). 17 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ mentary sequences would be deposited during glacial cycles. As a result, the researchers defined ’five glacial periods‘ (Acquatraversan, Cassian, Flaminia, Nomen- tanan and Pontinian) that they correlated with five Alpine glacial phases, from Donau to Würm (Blanc, 1955, 1957, 1958; Blanc et al.,1954,1955a,b). Although the erosional phases actually correspond to sea-level lower- ing and low stand during glacial stadials, while the sedi- mentary successions have been mainly deposited dur- ing interglacial cycles, Blanc's studies and its attempts to chronologically order the main stratigraphical Roman basin events, offerred the basis for the future develop- ment of the continental deposit chronostratigraphy in the area. 5. FOSSIL PLANTS, THE DAWN OF THE QUATERNARY AND GLACIATION At the dawn of stratigraphy in the last decades of the 18th century, the Linnean system of plant taxonomy was universally accepted by plant systematics (the 10th edition of Systema Naturae was published in 1758) and the botanical nomenclature (Species Plantarum, 1753) was used by the several botanists exploring the Old World (Linnaeus, 1753,1758). In the third decade of the 19th century, systematic palaeobotanists shared the concerns for a natural classification of fossil plants (Brongniart, 1828), based not only on external and re- productive but also on anatomical characters (Cuvier, 1821-1824). Comparison of dispersed fossil plant parts with the whole-organism morphology of related modern living genera and species laid the foundation for com- prehensive fossil floras and shed light on the relation- ships between fossil forms and the respective living taxa (Sternberg, 1820-1828; Brongniart, 1828-1838). Plant diversity of Tertiary strata mostly belonged to extinct species (Unger, 1850), an evidence suggesting the need for a most recent geological period: “we claim for a sub- sequent period, i.e. the Quaternary, which is character- ized by animal and plant species similar to modern living ones at the same site” (Reboul, 1833). However, at that time, comparing a fossil plant part with similar, yet de- scribed ones, was critical, due to shortages in material collection of either fossil or living taxa, and to poor as- sessments of world phytogeography. An example de- rives from Juglans bergomensis described by Balsamo Crivelli (1840) (the tale was reviewed by Martinetto et al., 2015). Several decades later, Sordelli (1873, 1878, 1896, Fig. 1b) was able to specify the aliquot of Tertiary species, presently extinct or eradicated from the Alpine flora, which were still occurring at several macrofossil plant deposits from Lombardy, clearly distinguishing the Quaternary records from the marine Pliocene leaf sites, and recognising three steps in the biochronological framework of plants in the Alpine Quaternary. An early step, considered to pre-date the diluvial and glacial events, was assigned to the Villafranchian, intended as a biochronological unit pinpointing the transition at the end of the Pliocene (Pareto, 1865). The following inter- mediate step, rich in elements from the Pontic Flora, was found at the classical sites of Piànico-Sèllere, Re in 4.3. Note on the first attempt at a chronological as- sessment of Quaternary continental sediments The study of continental Plio-Pleistocene strata and the fossils they contain has a long history in Italy. In the Renaissance, one of the earliest researchers to conclusively determine the organic nature of fossils was Leonardo da Vinci, far before Ulisse Aldrovandi invented the term ’Geology‘ in 1603. In the Leicester Codex (1506-1510), he mentioned, for example, the ’njchi‘ (shells) of the Arno deposits, whose alluvial origin he acknowledged, as well as of the Piacenzian deposits of the Parma and Piacenza hills. He claimed that in the past, the sea had occupied the Po Valley (De Lorenzo, 1920; Ligabue, 1977). Three centuries later, Abbot An- tonio Stoppani, geologist and palaeontologist, reiterated Leonardo's assertion, but to contest the glacial theory. Indeed, he affirmed that, in the Quaternary, the Adriatic occupied the entire Po valley, penetrating into those valleys that would be occupied later by glaciers and then by lakes. However, the first continental stage was defined only in the second half of the nineteenth century when Pareto (1865, Fig. 1b) proposed the "Piano Villafran- chiano", indicating Villafranca d’Asti as the type area, for a sequence of terrestrial sediments to fluvial and lacus- trine present in the sedimentary basin of Villafranca d'Asti (Piedemont). Subsequently, Gignoux (1916) pro- posed a correlation of this stage with his marine Calabri- an, at that time considered late Pliocene in age (see above). The Villafranchian definition is based on the palaeontological content, mainly mammals, of these strata. In this acceptance, for instance, the name was first used in the description of the central Italy fossilifer- ous deposits by Tuccimei (1889). The comparison of this mammalian fauna with other Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene mammalian faunal assemblages from Italy, i.e., those of the Valdarno Basin, which began in the 1970s, led to the definition of the Villafranchian Europe- an Land Mammal Age "ELMA" (Azzaroli, 1970, 1972, 1977), still widely used as a Eurasian biochronological unit. Accordingly, the term ’Villafranchiano‘ lost its origi- nal chronostratigraphical significance, although the name ’Villafranchian succession‘ is still maintained for historical reasons only for the deposits of the Villafranca d'Asti basin. Through the course of time, the stratigra- phy of the Villafranchian basin has been substantially revised (see e.g., Carraro ed., 1996), even through mul- tidisciplinary research (e.g., Forno et al., 2015). In the first half of the 20th century, geologist Alberto Carlo Blanc (1906-1960, Fig. 1c), who had a keen inter- est in archaeology and palaeoanthropology, conducted important research on the Quaternary deposits of Lazio (e.g., Agro Pontino, Circeo, and the Tiber and Aniene valleys). Following the discovery of the second skull of Saccopastore (Rome, Fig. 1c) he made with Abbot Breuil, (see below) (Breuil & Blanc, 1935a, 1935b), Blanc and collaborators intensified the geological inves- tigations of non-marine Pleistocene sections in the Ro- man area, then expanded to the Torreinpietra site and surrounding area. These investigations led to the detec- tion of major erosional phases, assuming that the sedi- 18 Orombelli G. et al. Val Vigezzo and the Hötting breccia of Innsbrück (Baltzer, 1893; Wettstein, 1892). The absence of far- Asiatic and Pontic elements in the most recent ’post- glacial flora‘ recorded from peat and calcareous tufa post-dating the glacial moraines of northern Italy (Villa, 1864, Neuweiler, 1905; Andersson, 1910) was related to a range contraction of temperate plants following the Quaternary glaciation cold-climatic interval (Sordelli, 1896). Likewise, the many Asiatic elements, typically recovered from the Leffe record in the Italian Alps, dis- appeared sharply after the Villafranchian, implying an early glacial event, corresponding to the multi-glacial theory promoted at the end of the 19th century (Penck et al., 1894). Ultimately, moving from the idea that ob- served changes between plant assemblages were not gradual through the course of the Quaternary, but in- stead they were framed by multiple cold intervals, the concept of interglacial floral assemblages emerged (Baltzer, 1893; Sordelli, 1896). Meanwhile, macrofossil plant sites raised another issue, which was to remain unsolved for many decades, i.e. the finds of temperate forest floras apparently present within glacial sequences (Baltzer & Fischer, 1890; Sordelli, 1896). 5.1. The origin of terrestrial pollen stratigraphy in the Quaternary of Italy Stratigraphical palynology originated as a tool to establish a time correlation between post-glacial peat sequences in Sweden (Von Post, 1909, 1916; see Man- ten, 1967 for a review). In the first decade of the 20th century, the palaeofloristic school of northern Europe was addressed to recognise the succession of macrofossil assemblages recovered from post-glacial peat (Andersson, 1898). Neuweiler (1905) and Anders- son (1910) visited peat basins in northern Italy, which were being excavated for fuel, and recognised an early post-glacial phase that included pine macrofossils, fol- lowed by oaks and warm-temperate aquatics, which were related to climate changes and to prehistoric dwell- ings. The concept that climate changes and human impacts could be interpreted from the stratigraphical study of apparently monotonous and short-lived peat sequences was perceived by the Italian geologist Tara- melli (1910). This may be considered the foundation of the interdisciplinary high-resolution Quaternary stratigra- phy we know today. Vegetation has the advantage that it integrates the climate over a number of years, and trees have a lifetime of decades (Hay, 2013), compara- ble to a single human generation. Despite these promis- ing premises, the first pollen analyses in Italy were de- layed until 1929, when Giuseppe Dalla Fior (Fig. 1c) and Paul Keller independently addressed the study of peat sites at the southern foothills of the Alps (Keller, 1931, Fig. 1c) and in the Venezia Tridentina (Dalla Fior, 1931, 1932, 1935). They disentangled the post-glacial forest history and found microbotanical evidence of prehistoric human impact on natural vegetation, i.e. at the pile dwelling of Molina di Ledro (Dalla Fior, 1940). The long debated Pleistocene issues related to the succession of glaciations and their ecological impact were soon tack- led by palynologists. The first pollen record of an alleged interglacial flora at Civezzano (Dalla Fior, 1933) re- vealed the image of a temperate forest. Later, the natu- ralist Pietro Zangheri carried out the first analysis of the glacial period in the subsurface of Forlì, on the Apennine side of the Po Plain, looking for the glacial and post- glacial history of pines in relation to the origin of the Pineta di Ravenna (Firbas & Zangheri, 1935). Dalla Fior may henceforth be considered the founder of strati- graphical palynology in Italy, his interests in palynology being stimulated by the phytogeographer Giuseppe Gola (Ferrari, 1977). 5.2. After the Second World War. Pollen records of Pleistocene plant diversity and climate change from lacustrine-palustrine records The potential of stratigraphical palynology to afford difficult problems in palaeoclimatology and Pleistocene palaeoecology emerged soon after the identification of insolation astronomical cycles (Milankovitch, 1941). As presented above (section 3.3), Italian Quaternary geolo- gists encountered substantial difficulties correlating the classical Penck & Brückner (1909) four-fold scheme of glaciations with the minima of the insolation curve, given the complexity of mathematical climate solutions and the discontinuity of the glacial record. Fausto Lona (Fig. 1c), a palaeobotanist, formed with Dalla Fior (Lona, 1941) within the strong botanical group active in the thirty years at Trento (Tomasi, 2010), was recruited to the Botanical Institute in Milano by the botanist Sergio Tonzig and, after the Second World War, invited to in- vestigate the pre-Mindelian lake record at Leffe by the geologist Sergio Venzo (Fig. 1c). In the 1940s, the nar- rative about the vegetation history of early Quaternary intervals was vague and its microbotanical diversity was unsuspected. However, the long lake record preserved in the Leffe Basin in the Italian Alps (Fig. 1c) held a number of opportunities: (i) it had virtually continuous sedimentation, it represented over 70 metres of lacus- trine sediments and brown coals (‘lignites‘) (Venzo, 1950); (ii) it had good pollen preservation and (iii) it was situated close to the early glacial moraine systems (Venzo, 1950), the oscillatiory behaviour of the glaciers indicated by which at the end of the Villafranchian Mam- mal Unit (Gignoux, 1943) was to be proved in the Alps. Hopefully, the pollen record by Lona (1950) and Lona & Follieri (1957) illustrated a continuous sequence of ten phases of contraction of coniferous forests and timber- line depression related to cold events, alternating with phases of mixed broad-leaved warm temperate forests, forming pollen assemblage cycles of varying amplitude. Thus, the Leffe sequence demonstrated, for the first time, the fine structure of the terrestrial climate history that characterises the European Early Pleistocene. These complex oscillations were believed to correlate with the early glacial phases of Donau and Günz and to span the entirety of the Late Villafranchian up to the early phases of the subsequent Cromerian Stage of Western Europe. This terrestrial correlation was present- ed in detail in a first terrestrial Pleistocene teleconnec- tion (Zagwijn, 1957). A few years later, after completion of the microbotanical record (Lona, 1962, 1963; Lona & 19 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ Bertoldi, 1973), it was concluded that all the warm inter- vals were to be considered interglacial in character, thus tuning the record to the global climate cyclicity observed in the first available Early Pleistocene marine sediment isotope records (Shackleton & Opdyke, 1973, 1976, 1977). The research topic on Pleistocene lacustrine- palustrine pollen stratigraphy was then expanded to explore the ecological history preserved in several inter- montane basins and Plio-Pleistocene marine sequences in peninsular Italy (Lona & Ricciardi, 1961; Lona et al., 1969; Lona & Bertoldi, 1972, 1973). At the conclusion of the present contribution, it is worth mentioning the legacy of Fausto Lona in the for- mation of contemporary research groups of Quaternary terrestrial palaeoecologists in Italy. His scholars Maria Follieri (1956,1958a,b and foll.) and Daria Bertolani Marchetti (1954, 1955, 1957 and foll.) established labor- atories in which long-standing and productive activity in all branches of Quaternary palaeobotany and archaeo- botany flourished. Moreover, in the 1950s, Arturo Pa- ganelli (1956, 1958, 1959 and foll.) formed an important research centre at Camerino, under the direction of Vittorio Marchesoni. 5.3. The early stages of archaeobotany and interac- tion with Quaternary studies in Italy The early history of studies on plant remains con- tained in deposits formed by human agency can be paralleled to the evidence offered by early archaeologi- cal excavations in the Vesuvian area. Already in 1740 carbonised plant remains found in Herculaneum were recognised and exhibited (Mariotti Lippi et al., 2014). The first archaeobotanical report from Pompei is dated to the third decade of the 19th century (Covelli, 1827). By the first half of 19th century, the first comprehen- sive fossil floras were being published (see section 5). Several plant records were analysed from settlements of Roman age (De Luca, 1863, 1879), but especially from waterlogged and hydromorphic deposits nearby to pre- historic wetland settlements, preserving very rich as- semblages both in anthropic and in semi-natural plants. These studies enjoyed success after the discovery of lake-dwellings in the circumalpine region (Keller, 1854), since Heer (1865) demonstrated the importance of the investigations on these waterlogged plant remains (Jacomet, 1998). A large array of pile dwellings and Terramaras, being excavated for fuel or for manure in northern and central Italy, yielded rich archaobotanical assemblages, readily identified and connected to human consumption and construction (Strobel and Pigorini, 1864; Lioy, 1876; Sordelli, 1880; Scarabelli, 1887). Alt- hough, several of these peat archives were soon de- stroyed and the fossil materials dispersed, even those sites still represent a reference for cultural biochronolo- gy today. The famous Torbiera of Lagoni di Mercurago, first studied by Gastaldi (1862) in connection with fuel exploitation, was depleted. Likewise, after recent drill- ings (CNR-IDPA, 2013), the deposit of the Torbiera of Polada, whose name is taken as a cultural reference for the early Bronze Age in the Garda Lake region (De Ma- rinis, 2000), turned out to have been exhausted by quar- rying. By the beginning of the 20th century, archaeobo- tanical synthesis became available for Italy (Neuweiler, 1905). The archeobotanical biodiversity was also com- pared with diluvial, or “Quaternary” floras, i.e. unaffected by human action (Sordelli, 1878, 1896). At the end of 19th century, the archaeobotanical discipline was still seen as the study of human agency on plants in a ‘post- Quaternary’ context. For a review on further develop- ments of palaeobotanical disciplines in Italy in the last sixty years, consult Paganelli and Bertolani Marchetti (1988) and Mariotti Lippi et al. (2014). 6. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE EARLIEST PALAETHNOLOGICAL STUDIES AND THE FIRST REPORTS OF PREHISTORIC HUMAN REMAINS IN ITALY 6.1. A look back at the beginnings of palaeoanthro- pological research in Italy The ancient beginnings of the human species have been upheld since the Classical Epoch by philosophers, historians and poets, including Plato, Herodotus, Diodo- rus Siculus, Strabo and Lucretius, who also claimed that there was a time when humans did not know metals but instead worked rough stones. Later, in the 16th century, the physician and naturalist Michele Mercati (1541- 1593) reaffirmed this concept, claiming that ancient hu- mans used lithic arms. In the Classical Epoch, illustrious people collected Palaeolithic tools and fossil bones. For example, Svetonius tells us that in the Emperor Augus- tus's villas there were bones of "gigantic beasts", prehis- toric arms and stone hatchets collected by him on Capri Island. In the 18th century, some naturalists, theologians, archaeologists and historians, such as Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730), Giovanni Antonio Bianchi (1686-1768), and Luigi Antonio Lanzi (1732-18109), mentioned pre- historic ’arrows‘. However, the scientific debate on the anthropogen- ic origin and age of lithic implements did not start until the early 19th century, promoted by the report by Bou- cher de Perthes, a geologist and antiquarian, of some lithic implements he had discovered and collected in the Palo cave (Rome) in 1810 and then in France in the Somme basin. This event also encouraged the begin- ning of research activities and excavation campaigns. Even in Italy, the presence of prehistoric man (human remains and artifacts) was definitively confirmed in the 19th century by the activities of some scholars, such as Luigi Ricci (1823 - 1896) and his son Corrado Ricci (1858-1934), founder of the Institute of Archaeology and History of Art, Arsenio (1828-1900) and Domenico Cre- spellani, founders of Modena archaeology, and Stefano De Stefani (1822-1892), who devoted himself mainly to survey and excavation campaigns such as those in the Monte Lessini territory. In the 19th century, however, the discovery and study of Palaeolithic artifacts were mainly the research activity of geologists such as Falconer, 20 Orombelli G. et al. Anca and Gemellaro (see above), while palaethnolo- gists focused on Neolithic, often attributing to it even hand-axes and Mousterian implements (except for those found in an indisputable stratigraphical context). The true nature and antiquity of Palaeolithic arti- facts were widely acknowledged in the early 20th centu- ry. Gian Alberto Blanc (1879-1966), a physicist, geo- chemist and palaeontologist, and his son Alberto Carlo Blanc (see above), provided a fundamental contribution to the development of Italian Palethnology through their fieldwork and studies. Pioneering studies of the Palaeolithic are attribut- ed, for instance, to Ippolito Cafici (1857-1947), who was in contact with Chierici, Pigorini and Strobel actively contributing to scientific debates; Raffaello Battaglia (1896-1958), who mainly carried out research in the fossiliferous caves of Venezia Giulia and discovered the Valcamonica's graffiti and engravings; Carlo Maviglia (1897-1956), who carried out research throughout Italy, from high altitude alpine sites, to Lombardy, to Basilica- ta (i.e., Vulture Basin), and to Sicily(e.g., San Teodoro cave, Messina); Luigi Cardini (1898-1971), who carried out, for instance, notable research at Balzi Rossi and in the Latium area; Franco Anelli (1899- 1977), a palaeon- tologist and speleologist, who studied cave deposits in northern Italy; Paolo Graziosi (1907-1988), the founder of the "Rivista Italiana di Preistoria e Protostoria", who focused attention especially to Mousterian cave and Upper Palaeolithic deposits. This is to mention just a few among several other scientists. Since the second half of the 20th century, research activities have become sensibly enhanced and the re- sults of the studies of the palaeothnological record prov- en, taking advantage of new investigation methods and the support of other disciplines. 6.2. The most noteworthy Palaeolithic human remains discovered from the 18th and the first half of the 20th century The palaeoanthropology - of which Édouard Lartet (1801-1871), palaeontologist, geologist, and anthropolo- gist is considered the founder - substantially established itself as an autonomous science in 1856, when the re- mains (a skullcap and elements of the postcranial skele- ton) of Homo neanderthalensis were discovered in 1856 in the Kleine Feldhofer cave (Neander valley, Feldhof, Germany). The first reports of Pleistocene human remains discovered in Italy (Homo sapiens) date from the1790s, when Emile Rivière reported two child burials (1874) in one of the caves (Grotta dei Fanciulli, Fig. 1b) of the Balzi Rossi site (Liguria). Other burials were discovered at the same site in 1884 by Louis Jullien at Balma Grande Cave (an adult male skeleton covered by ocra), then in the same cave by Giuseppe Abbo in 1892 (three burials of an adult male and of young and adolescent females), and then in 1894 (two adult males). Finally, in 1901, Léonce de Villeneuve discovered a single burial with the skeletons of an old and an adolescent female in the Grotta dei Fanciulli cave. The Arene Candide Cave is another renowned site located on the north-western Liguria coast with burials of anatomically modern humans. The Arene Candide Cave necropolis has yielded numerous burials dating back to the terminal phases of the Pleistocene (Epigravettian). The cave was first discovered by Issel in 1864, but the first excavation campaigns took place in the first half of the 20th century, carried out in the south-eastern sector of the cave by Luigi Cardini in 1940-42 and then, in 1948 -50, with Luigi Bernabò Brea. The research revealed a long stratigraphical sequence, spanning from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Byzantine epoch, and led to the dis- covery of several Upper Palaeolithic burials. Among the nineteen burials, the most famous is that called ’Giovane Principe‘ because of the very rich equipment found in the burial. The skeleton, discovered in 1942, covered with red ochre, belongs to a fifteen year-old hunter, 1.70 m tall, with very strong arms, especially the right one that threw spears while hunting (Cardini, 1942, 1980). The first remains of H. neanderthalensis had al- ready been reported in 1929, when Duke Mario Grazioli discovered the almost complete skull of a mature female in the gravel quarry at Sacco Pastore, on the left bank of the Aniene river in a rural area, today within the city of Rome. The discovery was communicated by Sergio Sergi who also studied the skull (Sergi, 1929, 1944). A few years after the discovery of this skull (Saccopastore I), the quarry was abandoned. During a geo- palaeontological survey in the Saccopastore cave in July 1935, Alberto Carlo Blanc and Abbot Henri Breuil found, the incomplete skull of an adult male (Saccopastore 2, Fig. 1c), lacking the entire vault, part of the base, and the left fronto-orbital areas (Blanc, 1942, Sergi, 1948). Four years later, on February 25, 1939, Alberto Carlo Blanc discovered a well-preserved third Neander- thal skull (Fig. 1c), belonging to a male approximately 40 -50 years old in the Grotta Guattari cave (Circeo Moun- tain) (Blanc, 1942). The discovery had great resonance also for the peculiar positioning of the skull, found in the centre of the cave, surrounded by a ring of stones and for the presence at the base of the skull of a hole at the time interpreted as the result of an anthropogenic action aimed at removal of the brain, namely ritual cannibalism. This hypothesis was long and hotly debated until it was definitively clarified that the hole was created by a hyae- na gnawing (White et al., 1991). From the second half of the 20th century onwards, new discoveries notably increased the Italian fossil rec- ord of Palaeolithic human remains, especially those not belonging to Anatomical Modern Humans (AMH). These are currently recorded from 37 sites, ranging in age from the early Middle Pleistocene (e.g., the femur diaphysis from Notarchirico, Vulture basin, dating to MIS 16: i.e. Cromerian Complex Stage) to MIS 3 (i.e. Mid-Würmian) (e.g., the mandibular fragment from Archi, Calabria and the Grotta Breuil, Circeo Mountain, skull fragment). The variety of the fossil record suggests a new scenario for the evolutionary dynamics of the Palaeolithic human population in Italy. A state-of-the-art on pre-modern hu- man fossils of Italy is presented in Buzi et al. (2021). 21 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ 7. CONCLUDING REMARKS AND PERSPECTIVES In this short review, the authors have attempted to outline the main research lines pursued on the Quater- nary in Italy, from the 18th to the mid-20th century, by scholars of natural history, geology, palaeontology and prehistoric archaeology. In general, they devoted them- selves to many different research topics from the most various periods of the Earth, with the partial exception of those who studied the traces of prehistoric man. The results of all these studies formed the foundations of a progressive specialisation along more clearly defined research lines in the years that followed, as well as a renewed interest in the past climate and environmental changes in comparison to climate change and the expo- nential increase of human impact. Following the long tradition of biostratigraphical research on the marine Neogene and Pleistocene se- quences in Italy, the study of marine Quaternary depos- its made important contributions to the definition of the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary and of the Pleistocene stages/ages. The Quaternary marine sections have been de- fined with increasing chronostratigraphical precision and detail as a result of multidisciplinary study and the gath- ering of new data. The stages previously proposed have been reconsidered, some redefined, and their rank re- evaluated (Capraro et al., 2022; Capraro & Maiorano, 2023). The Gelasian and the Calabrian (the first and the second stage of the Pleistocene Series, Quaternary System) have both been formally ratified. After the first fundamental work of Azzaroli (1977), which set the ba- sis of the mammalofauna biochronology, various schemes have been proposed in attempt to order chronostratigraphically the continental terrestrial depos- its according to their fossil mammal record. In the course of time, new discoveries and new data alter the schemes hitherto suggested, requiring revisions and new proposals (cf. e.g., Palombo, 2021 and reference therein). As a result, the problem of defining a stable and shared chronological structure that could facilitate correlations between Quaternary marine and continental deposits remains open. The study of the continental Quaternary deposits in Italy after the mid-1950s past century took advantage of the advances in sedimentology, geomorphology, neo- tectonics, soil sciences, glaciology, biostratigraphy, pal- ynology, isotope stratiography, tephrostratigraphy, and of various methods of numerical dating to improve its peculiar stratigraphic and correlation criteria. The mounting evidence of multiple Pleistocene climatic cycles, interpretred from the study of deep-sea sediment cores, long lacustrine pollen, and loess/ palaeosol successions, have led to the recognition of many more glaciations than the four of Penck & Brück- ner’s scheme (Šibrava et al. 1986), while the ice-cores drilled in Greenland and Antarctica revealed the millen- nial scale climatic variability (Johnsen et al., 1992; EPI- CA Community Members, 2006). For all these reasons the continental deposits of the plains and of the inter- montane basins in Italy could be studied and interpreted to decipher the complex events and the climate/ environmental changes at the different time scales (e.g. Giaccio et al., 2019), as well as their neotectonics impli- cations. The Neotectonic Map of Italy (Bosi, 1983, Fig. 1d) represented the first comprehensive attempt to syn- thetize the most recent (Plio-Quaternary) geodynamics of Italy; indeed, the entire territory turned out to have been affected by Quaternary tectonic activity (Galadini, 2004). New exciting discoveries of human remains, fre- quently associated with lithic and bone artifacts, have been made throughout the last fifty years from Italian sites studied by geologists, palaeoanthropologists, pal- aeobotanists and palaeontologists. Of note, for example, is the skull from Ceprano, the skeleton from Altamura, and the remains from Isernia La Pineta, Cava Pompi, Visogliano, La Polledrara di Cecanibbio, and Casal de’ Pazzi, together with the 5000 years old Ötzi mummy from the Niederjoch Glacier and the recently discovered nine Neanderthal individuals from the Guattari cave. In the last decades, a number of fine-resolution, multiproxy (biological, geoarchaeological and geo- biochemical) records have disentangled the role of hu- man activities in triggering the ecological history of the Mediterranean and Alpine Quaternary, with a growing interest for the Holocene and contemporary dynamics. These studies take their first insights from the multiproxy record of archaeological deposits. However, for a quanti- tative evaluation of interacting man, climate, and ecolog- ical processes it is compulsory to refer to off-site con- texts with natural and biological sedimentation, the vari- ety of which are offered by the diversity of Mediterrane- an landscapes, including tree rings evidence. This has promoted several connected palaeoecological- archaeological research efforts, remarkably in inhabited lakes and mires (pile dwellings), coastal marine, la- goons, backswamp basins and marine caves nearby settlements (harbours, trade, fishing and ritual centres). Thanks to this flexible long-to-short term and transdisci- plinary Quaternary concern it is now possible to com- pare past dynamics with contemporary changes, and to recognise baselines, thresholds and timelines of human impacts, in perspective to face an impending ecological transition. FUNDING C.R. acknowledges funding by the project “National Biodiversity Future Center - NBFC”, Code CN_00000033, funded by the Eu- ropean Union - NextGenerationEU -under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4. Component 2 Invest- ment 1.4 - Call for tender No. 3138 of 16 December 2021, rectified by Decree n.3175 of 18 December 2021 of Italian Ministry of University and Research. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS G.O. designed the overall structure of the paper and wrote section 3; M.R.P. wrote sections 2, 4 and 6; C.R. wrote section 5 and designed the Timeline (Fig. 1); 22 Orombelli G. et al. all authors wrote the foreword and the conclusive re- marks, and contributed to the selection of the Timeline entries. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank Enrico Rossi (MUSE - Museo delle Sci- enze di Trento, Ufficio ricerca e collezioni museali, Bibli- oteca "Gino Tomasi") for help with documentation on early palynologists and palaeobotanists in Trentino (i.e. Giuseppe Dalla Fior and Fausto Lona); Stefano Marabi- ni (University of Bologna) for information on the activity of Giuseppe Scarabelli; Sergio Bonomo (CNR-IGAG) and Luca Capraro (Univ. of Padova) for iconography of the Gelasian paratype; Ilaria Mazzini and Andrea Sposato (CNR-IGAG) for mining the history of AIQUA (Italian Association for Quaternary Studies). Two anony- mous reviewers provided significant hints to improve the quality of the paper. We are greatly indebted to Philip Gibbard (professor, Scott Polar Research Institute, Uni- versity of Cambridge), who carried out the English lan- guage correction and provided a qualified check over the identity of Quaternary concepts developed through the Italian narrative. We acknowledge the several institu- tions and scholars who provided images and documen- tation useful to build up the historical review of Quater- nary studies in Italy included in the timeline of Quater- nary Sciences in Italy presented in Figure 1. We thank Renata Perego (CNR-IGAG collaborator, archeobota- nist) for skillful page layout editing of the “Timeline”. Credits and references for images to the timeline are included in its caption. 23 Quaternary studies in Italy from Arduino to 1950’ - - - - - - - - - - - > Fig. 1 (a, b, c, d) - A graphic timeline depicting the main steps in the studies of Quaternary Science in Italy from the 18th to mid-20th centu- ry, with an abrigment of the milestones marking the last seventy years. some milestones have been provided by entries highlighted in bold. Credits and references for images included in the figure: Portraits of Quaternary scientists Lyell, de Mortillet, Cocchi, Penck, Brückner, Du Pasquer - From Wikipedia - creative commons; Martins - From gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France; Sordelli, Venzo - Courtesy of Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano; Omboni, Paglia, Pirona - Courtesy Phaidra - Univer- sità di Padova; Scarabelli - Courtesy Stefano Marabini; Stoppani - Courtesy Centro Studi Abate Stoppani; Arduino - From Library of the Correo Museum, Venice; Dalla Fior - photo by Gino Tomasi, Courtesy MUSE - Museo delle Scienze di Trento. Biblioteca; Lona - Courtesy Nota Olfattiva, Parma; Issel - Courtesy Società Geologica d’Italia - Geoitaliani.it; Cita - Courtesy Library Digital Collections | UC San Diego Library (Cita) https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb3721209v. Fossils, maps and drawings (1713) - Fossil Molar of Elephant (Cupani, 1713). (1829) - Prolagus sardous (Wikipedia). (1833) - Section Valle di Noto (Lyell, 1833). (1846) - Geological Map of the Liguria Marittima (Pareto, 1846a). (1850) - The Serra d’Ivrea glacial amphitheatre (Martins & Gastaldi, 1850). (1854) - Key of Carta Geologica di Ravenna. (Scarabelli, 1854). (1861) - Erratic block close to Frascarolo, Varese (Omboni, 1861b). (1865) - Palate with molars of Anancus arvernensis, Villafranchian sequence of Asti (Wikipedia, Courtesy Museo Palaeontologico Territo- riale dell’Astigiano). (1872) - Reconstruction of the ancient glacier from Valle del Cacciatore, Apennines (De Lorenzo, 1892). (1874) - Burial of Homo sapiens from Grotta dei Fanciulli, Balzi Rossi, Liguria (Catalogo Generale dei Beni Culturali, MiC - Ministero della Cultura). (1894) - Succession of imbricated glacial-fluvioglacial complexes, a generalised section (Penck et al., 1894). (1896) - Rhododendron ponticum fossil leaf from Piànico-Sèllere (Sordelli, 1896). (1914) - Thetystrombus latus from Issel’s collection found in Cala Mosca, Sardinia, ex Museo Sardo di Geologia e Palaeontologia of the University of Cagliari (Romo Mulas, 2018) . (1929) - Skull of Homo neanderthalensis from the Saccopastore cave, found by M. Grazioli in 1929 (Sergi, 1929) (Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution). (1931-32) - Synthesis of postglacial pollen stratigraphy from the Piedmont area (Keller, 1931). (1939) - (a) Skull of Homo neanderthalensis found in Grotta Guattari, S. Felice Circeo by Alberto Carlo Blanc in 1939 (Blanc, 1956). (b) Position of skull (a) in Grotta Guattari (Blanc, 1956). (1950) - The middle part of the Leffe lake stratigraphy, Central Alps (Vialli, 1967). (1953) - Logo of the IV INQUA Congress, Roma 1953 (restored and colored from https://www.inqua.org/) (1954) - (a) Cover of “Quaternaria”, vol. 1, and (b) Editorial board of “Quaternaria”, vol. 1 (Courtesy Italo Biddittu). (1956) - Cover of “Origine e sviluppo dei popoli cacciatori e raccoglitori” (Blanc, 1956). (1978) - Cover of “Geografia Fisica e Dinamica Quaternaria” first issue (Courtesy GNGFDQ). (1983) - Cover of the Neotectonic Map of Italy cased edition, published under the coordination of Carlo Bosi as a Research Package within a comprehensive Project on Geodynamics of Italy (“Progetto Finalizzato Geodinamica” promoted by the CNR) (Bosi, 1983). (1988) - (a) First logo of the Italian Association for Quaternary Studies (AIQUA); (b) Current AIQUA logo; (c) Cover of “Il Quaternario” first issue (Courtesy AIQUA). (1998) - The "Mandorlo" section described by Capraro et al. (2022), a novel stratigraphic profile encompassing the upper Piacenzian to lower Calabrian interval in the western sector of Monte San Nicola (Gela, Sicily), where the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the Gelasian Stage was defined (Photo courtesy of Sergio Bonomo). 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