Twelve students from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Pisa are preparing for a very particular off-campus lesson: in the second half of January, they will spend ten days in the Peruvian desert in the Ica region, not far from the famous Nazca lines, one of the world’s important paleontological sites. Eleven of the students, Alice Belluzzo, Laura Bronzo, Guglielmo Di Stefano, Alessandro Favaroni, Raffaele Gazzola, Giacomo Gazzurra, Pietro Giacomini, Amedeo Martella, Marco Merella, Leonardo Nicodemi and Lorenzo Porta, are studying for the Master’s degree in “Earth sciences and technologies ”, while Sara Citron is enrolled in the master’s degree in “Conservation and Evolution”.
They were chosen, from over forty applicants, on the basis of a series of parameters which took into consideration their educational path, their capabilities and also the motivation needed to face conditions so different from those of their student life. In fact, for the duration of the expedition, they will sleep in tents and share the limitations of desert life with their companions.
The people who will look after the students and guide them step by step through this adventure are Giovanni Bianucci, Alberto Collareta, Anna Gioncada, Giancarlo Molli and Giovanni Sarti, members of the teaching staff from the Department of Geosciences, alongside Giulia Bosio from the University of Milano Bicocca and Elena Ghezzo from the University of Venice, as well as Mario Urbina and other Peruvian paleontologists.
This exceptional team includes a number of members of a research team who have been doing important multidisciplinary work in this area between the south coast of Peru and the western border of the Andes mountain chain for over ten years. Among their discoveries are numerous finds of great importance such as the Leviathan, the largest marine tetrapod predator of the past (the reconstruction is exhibited at the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa in Calci), the Mystacodon, the oldest known whale, and many other extraordinary fossils which make this place one of the most important paleontological sites in the world.
Thanks to numerous international (National Geographic) and national (PRIN) projects and two projects funded by the University of Pisa (PRA), all coordinated by researchers from the Department of Geosciences, this site has become a fully-fledged laboratory for multi-disciplinary studies in differing fields of earth sciences. The research carried out has also contributed to turning the Ica desert into a crossroads for young students and researchers: undergraduates, doctoral students and scholarship students gain field experience there and can give an important scientific contribution to current research.
The initiative, coordinated by Giovanni Bianucci, was organized by the Department of Geosciences and financed entirely by the University of Pisa as one of the special projects for education. As well as students from the University of Pisa, it will include Peruvian students and members of the teaching staff from the ‘Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos’ (Lima).
