Antonio PRATURLON, gli Oceani e la Perestroika

Here is a brief account of how it became possible in the years 1990’s to launch an Italian program of research on ocean geology, with expeditions in the equatorial and south Atlantic and in the SW Indian Ocean. This program was carried out on the research ship Akademik Strakhov of the Geology Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, thanks to an agreement between the Russian Academy and the Istituto di Geologia Marina of the Italian CNR in Bologna. Antonio Praturlon played a major role in making this agreement possible. The results of this work, focused on the evolution of mid ocean ridge/transform systems and on the creation of new oceanic lithosphere, have appeared in major journals including Nature and Science.