The “E.A. Martel” Paleontological Museum, founded in 1972 by the “E. A. Martel” Speleological Research Group, and which became civic in 1996 thanks to the donation on loan for use of the collections to the city administration, until 2010 housed in the city in the spaces of Via Campania, has been transferred and reorganized in new large rooms, specially converted, in the pavilion of the old Workshops of the Great Mine of Serbariu, where it is allocated a total of 1740 m2 with more than half dedicated to the exhibition and educational path. The Martel’s historical collection was implemented with important artifacts, in original and in cast, of great scientific interest, which made it possible to completely renew the criteria of the display for the public. The central theme of the exhibition, set up in the ground-floor rooms of the “Palaeo Museum” Sulcitan Environments “E.A. Martel,” concerns bioevents and geoevents recorded in the rocks of southwestern Sardinia, with special attention toward the fossils preserved in them. Here, following a general geochronoloc- stratigraphic criterion, rocks and fossils pertinent to the Sulcis-Iglesiente area are presented with a time span from the pre-Cambrian to the present day. The central upper floor, on the other hand, houses the section dedicated to paleobiodiversity, where artifacts, from different world localities though with frequent references to Sardinia, are displayed, with a general overview of past organisms documented following the criteria of the different taxonomic classes. The central part of the ground floor also houses the Mass Extinctions and Dinosaurs section with marine and continental fossil specimens related to the Mesozoic, including a complete cast of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex.
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