In November 2023, the University of Padova carried out a geological exploratory mission in southern Morocco, carried out as part of the PRIN 2022 TEAMS project, TErrestrial And Marginal System in a hot world.

The aim of this project - led by the University of Florence with the principal investigator being Professor Marco Benvenuti, in collaboration with the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua and the National Council Research - is to study the Cenomanian succession of south-eastern Morocco.

This succession, known as Kem Kem beds, has an approximate age of 94-99 Ma (early Late Cretaceous), and is famous for the discovery of numerous vertebrate fossils which testify to an extremely diversified terrestrial ecosystem. However, it has not yet been studied in detail from the sedimentological point of view. The landscape of the Kem Kem region is extraordinary and represents the ideal place to analyze the Cenomanian-Turonian succession with a highly multidisciplinary approach.

In this video Anna Breda, associate professor of the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua; Marco Benvenuti, associate professor of the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Florence; Guido Roghi, researcher at the Institute of Geosciences and Georesources of the CNR in Padua; and Jacopo Nesi, Ph.D. student at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Florence, talk about the objectives of the exploratory mission and explain what can be observed directly in the field.

Shooting by Prof. Anna Breda

Editing by Barbara Paknazar