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LARIOSAURO'S EXHIBITION
 Inside the tower is possible to see an exhibition about Lariosaurus with reproductions of fossils found in Perledo neighbourhood, Varese and all around the world.
... a little bit of history...
Lariosaurus, a middle-sized fossil reptile genus (maximum length about 1 m), is ascribed to the Saupterigians, an extinct group of aquatic reptiles.
Its neck and skull rather outstretched, it dwelled brackish lagoons or coastal environments, feeding on fish caught by its long, thin, conical teeth, and swallowed one piece. Most of the Lariosaurus collected in the Middle Triassic rocks come from Perledo and Monte San Giorgio, but recently new specimens have also been found as far as in China.
Lariosaurus was one of the first Middle Triassic reptiles to be described in northern Italy.
Balsamo Crivelli, in 1839, described a specimen from Perledo, but he decided to hold out against the temptation of a new name, which he believed it could become a useless synonymous.
The name to the reptile was then given by Giulio Curioni in 1847, on the basis of other specimens collected in the Perledo quarries. He erected the species Lariosaurus balsami, in honour of Balsamo Crivelli who had first described the fossil.
In more recent times, Lariosaurus has proved to be widely and abundantly distributed all over Europe, with several different species (Lariosaurus balsami, Lariosaurus curionii, Lariosaurus calcagnii, Lariosaurus buzzii).
Its anatomy is now pretty well known thanks to the well preserved specimens from Perledo and the ones found in the Calcare di Meride at Ca del Frate (Viggi, Varese), ascribed to Lariosaurus valceresii.
The exceptional find of an embryo association has induced to hypothesize that Lariosaurus was a viviparous reptile.
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