  Since the daring intuition by Fritz Zwicky in 1933 about the existence of
dark matter in the Universe, in spite of the extensive investigations pursued
over a very long lapse of time, the nature of this matter and of its (other
than gravitational, if any) interactions have remained unknown. Very likely, at
least a fraction of this matter consists of fossil particles; a possibility
that in the last decades has prompted direct and indirect searches for these
relics. Particular attention has been (and is being) devoted to the
investigation about the physical effects that fossil particles, and in
particular Weakly Interacting Particles (WIMPs), moving in our galaxy can
produce when they scatter off the material of an appropriate underground
detector. In this note we consider the present status of this type of
experimental investigation, and comment about some important results obtained
recently by the DAMA Collaboration and their possible developments.
