The development of lithostratigraphy in the Alpine region during the early 19th century through the work of Giuseppe Marzari Pencati and Pietro Maraschini

Pietro Maraschini is mainly recalled in the histories of geology for his essay on the formation of rocks in the Vicentine prealps (1824), which enriched the works by Giovanni Arduino on the same mountain region and attracted the visits of some distinguished European geologists including Alexandre Brongniart; Marzari Pencati is known for his studies on the possible ways of intrusion of granite through the strata of limestone in the alpine area of Predazzo (South Tyrol), which prompted several geologists to visit the localities around Predazzo and led to a controversy with Leopold von Buch during the early 1820s. However, both Maraschini and Marzari Pencati also produced an impressive amount of research in the field on several topics. The results of this work remained mainly unpublished, especially in the case of Marzari Pencati, but clearly emerge from the content of their correspondence and collection of manuscripts. The aim of this paper is to provide an introductory and comparative picture of the scientific activities of both these significant Italian geologists, in order to understand their contribution to the lithostratigraphy of the Alpine region within the European context of the first decades of the 19th century, as well as to suggest further studies on published and unpublished primary sources.