The proposal of Torre Ove area as geoarcheosite

According to the most recent tendency about ecosustainable tourism and for protection of geological and landscape heritage we want to illustrate the areal geoarcheosite of Torre Ovo. It’s a marine area delimited between a cliff and clear coastal sea with the sea bottom which preserve romans ruins, anphoras and stones talking about far wars, legends, and a mysterious fossil wood, unique exemplar in the world, a mix from nature world and human fantasy. This site, as you can see it, has many values, going from geology to geomorphology to archeology, but it needs to be preserved and to be valued. Torre Ovo placed at 45 km south-east from Taranto and it was built by Spanish Government in XVI sec. as all the sighting towers along the Salento coast against the Saracen ships, which love to attack this part of coast line. Probabily the tower was Templar Fort of Malta Cavaliers in Mruggio, also. At the bottom of the tower there are some Roman age ruins: a greek- roman port, part of villa in which it’s possible to discover mosaic rest belonging to floor and some structurally parts. Many old people tells that floor was used by Nazi tanks and military vehicles to arrive at ships. There is a legend also, about a treasure hidden into a cavern by nazi soldiers, coming from robbery in the near towns. Another scientific feature of Torre Ovo area is the “fossil wood” so named because it appears as a submerged tree wood. But it was created by geological phenomena. At 200 meters from coastal line where the tower placed, and at 5 meters depth, South-South Western direction, it’s possible to see above the sea bottom many columns, some of them broken or fragmented, as tree trunks. A detailed investigation discovered the origin of it, attributing the strange forms to sedimentary process known as bioturbation. When the sands was melted, organism as worms and gasteropodi excaved long burrows and gallery disturbing the regular sedimentation. Then, during the litiphication process (diagenesi) the burrows, filled up by calcium carbonate was transformed in calcareous columns. During the surfacing time the selective erosional process destroyed the fine and soft sand sediments surrounding the columns. In the last time phase the sea submerged all and now we see these columns standing out against the bottom. Starting from Quaternario time in the examined area such as along all the coast line from Torre Lapillo to Torre Ovo, some oscillations of sea level appeared with continuous relocation of coast line. Dune sands composed by immature sandstone grey-yellowish coloured covered the red terrains (Helix) 8000 – 3000 years old in many places of coast narrow. Other sea level oscillations, even if only little and positive ( trasgressione versiliana-regressione attuale) created recent coast dunes near Torre Ovo and in other places along this coast line. For this reasons the area is much more representative about geological history of Ionic Arc Coast. The sand beaches are the most representative component of this coast; the cliff are typical of some western segments of this coast line. The olocenic dunes are hard cemented and it’s possible to recognize cross bed with 35° dip stratas. This eolic sedimentation’s structure was built by long time wind action coming from sea direction; the continental sand contribution was insignificant because of lack of rivers and poor superficial idrography. The greek-roman age dunes, insteas, composed by no hard sands, clear yellow coloured, in which it’s possible to recognize many brown soil levels. The batimetric analysis of Torre Ovo marine area provided some hypothesis about the coast line movements during the period. According to the authors , the application of the above as georcheosito is necessary and preliminary to a subsequent protection and enhancement