Francesco Imperato – de fossilibus opusculum (Quaderni dell'Accademia Pontananiana)

Francesco Imperato lived between the second half of XVI century and the first half of XVII century. He was a jurist, a politician and a scholar of natural sciences. In 1610 he issued a book entitled De fossilibus opusculum. In the work he shows a direct and deep knowledge of the subject that he acquired through the study of the researches of his father Ferrante, chemist of great fame. By observing and studying some objects of the family museum, Francesco elaborates some interesting theories and formulates some hypothesis about the origin and the nature of fossils. In the book here introduced, the study of this not well known Imperato’s work is deepened to provide to the community of scholars not only a new piece of history of paleonthology but more largely of history of scientific culture and thought in the first modern age. The introduction of Enrica Stendardo at the beginning of the book, entitled Francesco Imperato giureconsulto e naturalista napoletano, outlines the personality of the author comparing and crossing sources of different origin. De fossilibus opusculum is written in XVII century Latin and the original text is here added. Mariantonietta Paladini translated it in Italian (pp.121-198). The examination of the old references is in the section Nota alla traduzione del testo latino by Mrs Paladini and in Imperato e le fonti greche by Carmela Pisaniello. In Aspetti scientifici del De Fossilibus, Filippo Barattolo and Caterina Porcaro worked to interpret and give back to historians of paleontology the thought of Francesco Imperato, on the edge of new and old knowledge as a supporter of an obsolete inorganic hypothesis but intuitively modern in the elaboration of the concept of extinction, at least as an element of discussion. Such an interesting work deserved to be presented to the International community of scholars. Therefore Francesca Coletta translated it in English adopting the method of an “updated” translation aiming at communicating the original content in modern language key.