Mario Tozzi was born in Rome in 1959. After graduating in Geological Sciences at La Sapienza University in Rome, he then followed the usual career path and finally became Research Doctor, CNR (National Research Council) Researcher and, in 1999, First Researcher for CNR. He mainly focuses on the Mediterranean sea's geological evolution and studies the deformations of the rocks to reconstruct their history.
He has written more than seventy scientific publications on Italian and international journals, prepared more than seventy speeches for national and international congresses, written geology guides and university courses material. He constantly collaborates in several roles with various Italian universities and provides annual refresher courses for science teachers. From 1996 he began his work in popularisation of Earth sciences through all the available media. For this very reason the Federazione Italiana di Scienze della Terra (Italian Federation of Earth Sciences) appointed him as head of the popularisation section.
Among the many television programmes that have made him famous to the general public there are: GAIA - il pianeta che vive (Gaia, the living planet), La Gaia Scienza (The Gay Science), Geo & Geo (Geo & Geo), the weekly programme King-Kong and G come Geologia (G like Geology). He also reviews and prepares texts for documentary films (working from the scientific point of view), some of which he also hosts and directs. In 2003 he started working as an expert for Che tempo che fa (What's the weather like) on Rai 3. He works with several newspapers, journals and magazines; he writes on National Geographic, La Stampa and Vanity Fair. He hosted the radio programme Tellus for Rai radio 2.
In 2010 he published: “Italia segreta. Viaggio nel sottosuolo da Torino a Palermo”(Secret Italy. A Journey from Turin to Palermo) and  “Nel nome del parco. Un anno sull’arcipelago” (In the name of the park. A year on the archipelago). In the latter book the researcher and geologist claims that the Tuscan Archipelago is one of the direct proofs that a true heaven exists on Earth. A place ripe with charm but also a place that risks to be seriously damaged in the name of development. A book that, in addition to telling Tozzi's experiences as chairman of the Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago Toscano (Tuscan Archipelago National Park) also talks about environment protection and history of the environment.