Monte San Giorgio

Monte San Giorgio was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2003 for the Swiss part, in the canton of Ticino, and in 2010 the property was extended to the Italian slope, in the province of Varese, becoming transboundary.

It is a wooded, pyramid-shaped mountain rising above Lake Lugano, and its value lies entirely underground. Its strata preserve the finest known fossil record of Middle Triassic marine life, between 247 and 235 million years ago, when the area was a shallow tropical lagoon separated from the open sea by reefs.

The anoxic conditions on the floor of that lagoon allowed exceptional preservation: complete, articulated skeletons of marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, nothosaurs and placodonts have been recovered, alongside fish, crustaceans, molluscs and also land fauna washed in from the shore, such as the archosaur Ticinosuchus. The sequence spans five distinct fossil-bearing levels, which makes it possible to follow the evolution of the ecosystem over millions of years. Excavations began in the middle of the nineteenth century and continue, and the finds are held in museums in Zurich, Milan and Meride.