Pietra di Bismantova
Encyclopedia
Comune
In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...
of Castelnovo ne' Monti
Castelnovo ne' Monti
Castelnovo Monti Castelnovo Monti Castelnovo Monti (official: Castelnovo ne' Monti is a town and comune in the province of Reggio Emilia, central Italy.Along with every other town and village in the Apennines, Castelnovo is an approved area for the production of Parmesan cheese...
, province of Reggio Emilia
Province of Reggio Emilia
The Province of Reggio Emilia is one of the eight provinces of the Italian Region of Emilia-Romagna. The capital city, which is the most densely populated comune in the Province, is Reggio Emilia....
, central Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, c. 45 km from Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia is an affluent city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has about 170,000 inhabitants and is the main comune of the Province of Reggio Emilia....
. It has the shape of a narrow, quasi-cylindrical plateau (measuring 1 km x 240 m) whose steep walls emerge c. 300 m as an isolated spur from the nearby hills. The top has an altitude of 1,047 m over the sea level. It is included in the National Park of the Appennino Tosco-Emiliano.
The spur is composed of yellowish calcarenite
Calcarenite
thumb|250px|The [[Pietra di Bismantova]] in central [[Italy]] is an example of calcarenite formation.Calcarenite is a type of limestone that is composed predominately, more than 50 percent, of detrital sand-size , carbonate grains...
over a marl
Marl
Marl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...
basement, all formed in the Miocene
Miocene
The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...
as a sea bottom. It includes fossils belonging to a tropical environment. It is surrounded by woods, mostly of oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
s.
The Pietra di Bismantova is mentioned by Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
in his Divine Comedy (Purgatory, IV, 25-30).