Inventory of the geopalaeontological heritage in protected areas of the Campania Apennines

Goal of the present paper is to select important geopaleontological sites in protected areas of the Campania Apennines by constructing a geosites database. In particular, following research activities focused on Cretaceous rudist benthic communities, areas where fossiliferous horizons occur rich in rudists have been selected. These organisms were widespread in shallow marine settings during the Cretaceous time and become extinct at the end of that period. The wide distribution of the rudists during the Cretaceous makes them an usefull key to evaluate the paleoecological and sedimentary conditions of the environments they colonized. Their study may provide interesting qualitative insight in palaeoecological dynamics of carbonate platforms. Geopalaeontological sites from protected areas of the Campania Apennines have been recognized and listed in order to promote the knowledge of the geological history of these regions not only among specialists. A computerised database of the selected geopaleontological sites has been created on the base of the Italian Geological Survey indications. Tabeled data have been imported in a GIS project that also contain the administrative boundaries and the limits of Regional/National Parks and Protected Areas. Other tematic database can be linked to the GIS project. Such a recognition and inventory may offer a way to make use of such an heritage through naturalistic routes that evidence the geological history of a region