National Park Kornati

The Kornati archipelago is located in the northern part of Dalmatia, south from Zadar and west from Šibenik. Kornati are the densest archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1980, the eighty-nine southernmost of the 140-odd islands, islets and reefs of the Kornati archipelago were declared a national park, protecting the islands and their marine surroundings. The area covered by the National Park mostly coincides with the Donji Kornati, which includes the island of Kornat and the surrounding islets, separated with a channel from the island of Piškera and the surrounding islets. Most of the terrain in the Kornati islands is karst-limestone, which, in the distant geological past, arose from sediment from the sea. In the stone on the islands, there are numerous fossils of crustaceans and fish. In the area there examples of all the typical forms of karst: bizarre shapes formed by the atmosphere, unexplored caves, and areas of flat rock and, above all, cliffs.