530-million-year-old rocks discovered in the Dora-Maira Massif
A team of researchers from the University of Turin and the University of Bern has identified, in the Dora-Maira Massif between the Pinerolo area and Val Chisone, rocks of magmatic origin dating back around 530 million years, long before the Alps took on their current shape. The findings were published on 5 October 2026 in the international scientific journal Terra Nova.
The discovery grew out of work to update the geological map of the Pinerolo area, whose previous version dated back to 1913. The project, part of the national CARG programme and carried out by the University of Turin under an agreement with ISPRA, involved new field surveys: the rock samples collected were cut with a diamond saw and turned into extremely thin sections for microscopic observation. Rodolfo Carosi, a lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Turin and president of the Italian Geological Society, explained that redoing the map was necessary precisely because of how old the 1913 version was.
To date the rocks, the research involved the University of Bern, where professor Daniela Rubatto, a graduate of Turin, heads a geochronology laboratory; PhD students Francesco De Cesari and Davide Dana brought the samples collected in the Piedmont mountains to Switzerland. Through the analysis of zircons, minerals capable of preserving information about when rocks formed, two different types of rock from the Dora-Maira Massif were dated to 532 and 530 million years ago respectively, an age that, according to Carosi, had never before been recorded for this stretch of the Alps. These are rocks formed during the Cambrian period, when the Earth looked profoundly different from today and the Alps did not yet exist.
Sources
- CronacaQui Torino — 7 October 2026