MORO, ANTON LAZZARO. - Priest and scientist, b. at S. Vito al Tagliamento on 16 March 1687, d. there on 13 Apr. 1764.
He cultivated music and belles-lettres; he was director and teacher at the Seminary of Feltre; then choirmaster at Portogruaro, and subsequently at S. Vito, where he founded the college that bore his name; thereafter parish priest at Corbolone di Livenza and finally at Pola, tutor to the nephews of that bishop.
In the work that won him fame, De' crostacei e degli altri corpi marini che si truovano su' monti (Venice 1740), he refuted the theories of Burnet and Woodward, being the first to maintain that subterranean fire is capable of disrupting the arrangement of strata and raising the seabed. He divided mountains into primari and secondari, that is, arising from the original or from subsequent conflagrations. In 1751 the work was published in Leipzig in German. A dissertation of his, Dell'origine de' crostacei, dates from 1737 (published in 1838); and from 1750 a Lettera o una dissertazione sopra la calata de' fulmini dalle nuvole (Venice, n.d.). Various letters by him were published posthumously.