It dates back to the Early Sinemurian, and would have represented a pelagic or near-epicontinental environment, judging by the presence of marine fauna such as the nautiloid Cenoceras.

[2][3] The Fossils of the Formation were described on the late 1880s and revised on 1960s, finding first marine biota, such as Crinoids, Bivalves and other fauna related to Epicontinental basin deposits.

[5] In today's quarry what is mainly known as the Saltrio Formation emerges, i.e., a group of stratified rocks dating back to the Lower Jurassic.

Inside the quarry, Dolomia principale sediment emerges dating back to the Upper Triassic (Norian); yet the succession is dominated by the Saltrio Formation, here 15-20 meters thick.

At the roof of the Moltrasio Fm, a whitish yellow limestone emerges, again of marine-pelagic origin, where there is a lot of micro-diffused silica within the sediment.

The scholar describes the fossil faunas of Saltrio by listing and detailing various taxa belonging to ammonoids, nautiloids, gastropods, crinoids, brachiopods and bivalves.

Paleontologists could only recover fossils from the waste flakes near the quarry and therefore the possibility of seeing more specimens was limited to the length of manual operations.

[5] The fauna present at the base of the Saltrio Formation is condensed and includes ammonoids of species attributed to the entire Upper Sinemurian.

[4] The contact between the Main Dolomite and the Saltrio Formation also contains selachian teeth, glauconite and phosphated internal models of ammonites.

[7] Since the beginning of the jurassic, from Hettangian to earliest Sinemurian on the western Lombardy Basin there was a notorious continental area that was found to be wider than previously thought, where a warm humid paleoclimate developed.

[8] The basin facies are characterized by a gradual transition from Upper Rhaetian shallow-water carbonates to Lombard siliceous limestone and thick Lower Liassic series.

[9] This was an emerged structural high close to the Saltrio Formation, that caused a division between two near subsiding basins located at Mt.

[9] It settled over a carbonate platform linked with other wider areas that appear along the west to the southeast, developing a large shallow water gulf to the north, where the strata deposited was controlled by a horst and tectonic gaben.

The Saltrio deposits show signs of stratigraphic condensation, which refers to slow sediment accumulation over time, often resulting in hardgrounds, surfaces drilled by marine organisms, and the presence of minerals like Glauconite and Phosphorite.

In some areas, the Saltrio layers blend with the "Broccatello d'Arzo", a related limestone formation, but they can still be separated based on differences in their structure and fossil content.

[9] Several outcrops of the so-called “terra rossa” paleosoils were also found, including at Castello Cabiaglio-Orino, a dozen of kilometers West of Saltrio.

[10][11] This outcrops show that the emerged areas that on the Hettangian-Sinemurian, the current location of the modern Maggiore Lake were covered with forests, what was proven by the presence of large plant fragments on the Moltrasio Formation.

[8] The plants have been recovered between the locations of Cellina and Arolo (eastern side of Lake Maggiore), from rocks that have been found to be coeval in age to the Saltrio Formation.

[12] The Flora includes genera such as Bennettitales (Ptilophyllum), terrestrial Araucariaceae (Pagiophyllum), and Cheirolepidiaceae (Brachyphyllum), that developed on inland areas with dry-warm conditions.

In the early Sinemurian, the Arbostora swell became again a shallow open sea (ramp-slope), still surrounded South and South-West by emerged land.

The latter possibility was suggested by Lualdi (1999), in which he analyzed the local geology based on the presence of terrestrial plants and terrigenous content (sands from igneous or metamorphic rocks exposed to sub-aerial erosion) in the limestones.

[12] Terrestrial plants are essentially represented by leaves and small branches of Araucariaceans and Bennettitales, the typical flora of the early Mesozoic.

Also, according to the most current paleogeographic maps, truly continental land located closer these Jurassic times lower were the Mountains of Sardinia, Corsica, distanced many tens of kilometers WNW.

[13] Coeval and slightly younger in age, large dinosaurs, carnivorous and herbivorous, were present as shown in various footprints of the lower Jurassic (Hettangian-Sinemurian) in the province of Trento, around 160 kilometres (99 mi) east of Saltrio, which changed the traditional view of the palaeoenvironments and paleogeography of the region, considered a tropical sea with small islands of the atoll type.

[15] "It is more likely that the Peri-Adriatic Platforms worked with temporary continental bridges that connected with Laurasia Gondwana in central Tethis, allowing migration between the two hemispheres and colonization of local coastal habitats.

During the marine transgressions, some of these lands were isolated, implicating genetic Mutations in their terrestrial faunas, with typical biological consequences, as endemism and possible dwarfism".

Mistake for other related genera on the deposit, it is among the most abundant local Scallops, although the affinities with the genus Pecten haven't been proved.

Millericrinus[4][22] Multiple ossicles A Sea lily, type member of the family Millericrinida inside Crinoidea.The main Crinoid identified locally.

Quoted on the 1880s, specimen that apparently has never been fully described or figured and whose present repository is unknown Saltriovenator[13][3][2] S. zanellai[3][2] “Salnova” quarry.