The rock and mineral preparation laboratory and repository are hosted in IGG Pisa headquarter
The Laboratory
Located at the Pisa site, it allows for easy and professional preparation of geological (rocks, minerals, soils), archaeological (ceramics, coins, etc.), and artistic (painting films, etc.) materials prior to the production of preparations intended for scientific investigations (thin sections, thick sections, separate specimens, microsamples, etc.).
The Petroteca houses approximately 1,500 boxes containing rock samples (≈ 10,000), 90 boxes of separate minerals (≈ 2,000), and 140 boxes of cores (≈ 2,000 half cores, including a temporary collection of samples from ENEL Green Power's geothermal wells). The samples originate from research projects conducted at IGG since the 1960s. The collection of rocks and minerals covers the entire planet and all geological eras. The most represented rock types are igneous and metamorphic, but sedimentary and hydrothermal rock samples are also included.
The primary focus of many past and ongoing projects is understanding magmatic systems in the geodynamic context of the Circum-Mediterranean area. For this reason, the Petroteca houses a large collection of rocks from:
- Active Italian volcanoes
- Tuscan Magmatic Province (Miocene-Quaternary)
- Roman/Campanian Magmatic Province (Quaternary)
- Alpine Oligocene magmatism
- Cenozoic-Quaternary magmatism of the Balkans-Greece-Türkiye-North Africa area
- Paleozoic magmatism of Sardinia and Calabria
Other important research projects have been developed on magmatic, metamorphic, and hydrothermal systems in Antarctica, the Alpine-Himalayan Orogenic Chain (Carpathians, Caucasus, Zagros, Karakoram, Himalaya), Central and South America, East Africa, the Red Sea, Madagascar, etc. Many of these samples have considerable scientific and economic value as they come from geopolitical areas that are difficult to access (e.g., Zabargad, Turkey, Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria, etc.), from currently inaccessible geological/mining sites (e.g., abandoned mines in Tuscany and Sardinia), and from old exploratory surveys. Furthermore, many of the preserved samples have been studied in detail (petrography, isotopic dating, geochemistry, isotopes, etc.) and the results published in national and international scientific journals. A collection of thousands of thin sections is available for consultation.
Instruments
The laboratory is equipped with the following equipment:
- gravimetric separation (shake table, Na-polytungstate system)
- cutting (diamond disc saws)
- crushing (presses and jaw/disc crushers)
- pulverization (planetary ball/disc mills)
- sieving (vibrating screens)
- microscopy (binocular stereoscopic and petrographic microscopes)
- magnetic separation (Frantz and Carpco separators)
Staff and Contacts
The laboratory staff is composed of:
- Dr. Andrea Dini (Laboratory Manager)
Contacts:
- +39 050 6212370 (Dr. Andrea Dini)
- email: andrea.dini@igg.cnr.it
Methods and Applications
The preparation of these materials occurs through various techniques:
- cut
- crushing
- sifting
- pulverization
- coring
- polishing
- gravimetric and magnetic separation
Samples arriving at the Petroteca are temporarily stored in the large antechamber, where they are initially prepared, catalogued, and crated. The entire rock and mineral collection has been catalogued on paper since the 1960s. Boxes are labeled with their box numbers, and each card contains all the information regarding their contents: sample number, abbreviations, location, etc. The catalogues have recently been digitized to facilitate shared use of the collection inventory, even remotely, and to facilitate cross-referencing of rock samples, separated minerals, cores, and thin sections. The most recent samples have already been entered, and the process is underway for the older ones. An evaluation of the older materials is also underway to potentially eliminate unnecessary samples and reclaim storage space.
Scientific Projects and Interests
The availability of metadata-enabled rock and mineral samples and their cataloging in online databases is essential for their use in a wide variety of contexts. The IGG Petroteca contributes to national and international projects such as the NextData Project of National Interest and the ESFRI EPOS.
Publications
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