46°33′36″N 11°42′17″E / 46.56000°N 11.70472°E
Val Gardena (Italian: [ˌval ɡarˈdeːna, ˌval ɡarˈdɛːna]; German: Gröden [ˈɡʁøːdn̩] ; Ladin: Gherdëina [ɡʀ̩ˈdɜi̯na] ) is a valley in the Dolomites of South Tyrol, Northern Italy. It is best known as a tourist skiing, rock climbing, and woodcarving area.
A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word cairn comes from the Irish: carn [ˈkʰaːrˠn̪ˠ] (plural cairn [ˈkʰaːrˠɲ]).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, they were raised as markers, as memorials and as burial monuments (some of which contained chambers).
The Langkofel Group (Ladin: Grupa dl Saslonch, Italian: Gruppo del Sassolungo) is a massif in the (western) Dolomites of the Italian Alps. It separates Gröden (to the north) and the Fassa valley (to the south), as well as the Sella massif (to the east) and the Rosengarten (to the west). Northwest of the Langkofel is the Seiser Alm. The highest point in the range is the eponymous Langkofel with a height of 3,181 metres. Taken together, the summits of the Langkofel form an arc which is only open towards the northwest. Within this arc there is only one small mountain, the Langkofelkarspitze, so that the group surrounds a kind of "inner courtyard".
The Ladins are an ethnolinguistic group of northern Italy. They are distributed in several valleys, collectively known as Ladinia. These valleys include the valleys of Badia and Gherdëina in South Tyrol, of Fassa in Trentino, and of Livinallongo (also known as Buchenstein or Fodom) and Ampezzo in Belluno. Their native language is Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language related to the Swiss Romansh and Friulian languages. Ladinia is located in the historical region of Tyrol, and Ladins share that region's culture, history, traditions, environment and architecture.
Ladins developed a formal national identity in the 19th century. Micurà de Rü undertook the first attempt to develop a written form of the Ladin language. Ladin culture is promoted by the government-sponsored cultural institute Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü in the South Tyrolean municipality of San Martin de Tor. There is also a Ladin museum in the same municipality. The Ladins of Trentino and Belluno have their own cultural institutes: Majon de Fascegn in Vigo di Fassa, Cesa de Jan in Colle Santa Lucia and Istituto Ladin de la Dolomites in Borca di Cadore.
Acentrophorus is an extinct genus of prehistoric freshwater and marine ray-finned fish from the Roadian (Guadalupian/Middle Permian) to the Wuchiapingian (Lopingian/late Permian) of England (Marl Slate), Germany (Kupferschiefer), Italy (Val Gardena) and Russia (Baitugan Formation). There may also be a Triassic occurrence in Australia.