Vatera is 55Km in total from Mytilini. The 7Km long, sandy beach here, backed by vegetated hills and looking out to Hios and Psara, offers some of the warmest, cleanest swimming on Lesvos. Several decent hotels and taverns with fresh fish and traditional tastes are across the biggest beach on the island. One of those is the A treasure trove of fossils.
The Vatera area hit the Greek news in 1997 when a palaeontologist, Michael Dermitzakis, confirmed what farmers unearthing bones had long suspected when he announced that the area was a treasure trove of fossils, including bones of two-million-year-old gigantic horses, mastodons, monkeys and tortoises, the latter the size of a small car. Until 20000 years ago, Lesvos was joined to the Asian mainland, and the gulf of Vatera was a subtropical freshwater lake, the animals in question came to drink, died nearby and were trapped and preserve by successive volcanic flows. In Vrissa the University of Athens have established a Natural history collection dedicated to the pale ontological finds. 3Km west you can gaze out to the cape of Agios Fokas, where foundations and columns stubs remain of the temple of Dionysos and an early Christian basilica.
Vrissa is at the southern part of Lesvos, 2 km away from Vatera. In this beautiful village, the history of which goes far back in ancient times there is the very interesting Natural History Collection which includes palaeontology finds, discovered in clay deposits in and around lakes and streams. The finds include fossilized parts of rare land and sea animals and fossilized flora with an average age of two million years.
The most important animal fossils discovered are: the jawbone and other parts of the skeleton of two proboscides - ancestors of today elephant - and in various locations fossilized horse bones of various sizes, bones and jawbones of the carnivorous Nyctereutes megamastoides - a relative of today nyctereutes- bones of giraffes, deer, antelopes, gazelles, bovines and bones of tortoises (one of the most impressive finds are the bones of a giant tortoise 2.5 m. long). However the most amazing among the finds is an extremely rare family of giant apes, belonging to the species of Paradolipithecus, the earliest representative of the species in Europe. The discovery of the above finds resulted in the creation of the Natural History Collection, which is housed for the time being in the building of Vrissa school. 
