Page 9 - Malatesta

Alberto Malatesta: 20 years of activity at the Geological Survey of Italy 19

Fig. 7 -Original legend of the geological sheet of the Egadi Islands with autograph annotations by A. Malatesta (housed by the Collection
of the Department for librarian activities, documentary and for information of ISPRA - Geological Survey of Italy).
Legenda originale delle Isole Egadi con annotazioni autografe del Prof. A. Malatesta conservata presso la Cartoteca del Dipartimento
per le attività bibliotecarie, documentali e per l’informazione di ISPRA (Servizio Geologico d’Italia).

importance for their scientific value and, not less impor-
tant, for their historical and exhibition relevance.
Animals (marine and terrestrial) and plants, distri-
buted along a time interval that spans from Palaeozoic
(Cambrian) to Quaternary (Pleistocene and Holocene)
constitute the housed fossil collections. Present day
specimens for comparison are also present in the collec-
tion.
The Collections were originally divided in two large
sections: a general one, taxonomically ordered, and a
second, which included geographically confined collec-
tions, ordered following the different nature of sedi-
ments.
Furthermore, a remarkable number of fossil re-
mains belonging to personal collections must be added.
Since the last century, these fossils were studied by
many scientists that published the results of their re-
Fig. 8 - Opening of the Geological Agrarian Museum by King searches as monographs or scientific works in presti-
Umberto I on May 3rd 1885 at the new office of Largo S. Su- gious Italian and foreign scientific journals.
sanna, 13. In the years 1996-98 the Museum was involved,
Inaugurazione del Museo Geologico Agrario in Largo Santa for the first time from its constitution, in a cataloguing
Susanna 13, da parte del Re Umberto I il 3 maggio 1885. and inventory project. A rather structured data-base for
the management of the collections themselves was
3.2. Present setting realised (Angelelli, 1992). In such circumstances the
As already mentioned in the previous paragraph, various collections of fossils were grouped in four sec-
currently the Paleontological Collections consist of a tions:
considerable number of remains (around 100.000), di- General collection (about 76.000 specimens) con-
vided in several sections, a lot of which have a great tains invertebrate remains collected during the geologi-