Abstract
The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC) - the most abrupt, global-scale environmental change since the end of the Cretaceous – is widely associated with partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea. A major open question is the way normal marine conditions were abruptly restored at the end of the MSC. Here we use geological and geophysical data to identify an extensive, buried and chaotic sedimentary body deposited in the western Ionian Basin after the massive Messinian salts and before the Plio-Quaternary open-marine sedimentary sequence. We show that this body is consistent with the passage of a megaflood from the western to the eastern Mediterranean Sea via a south-eastern Sicilian gateway. Our findings provide evidence for a large amplitude drawdown in the Ionian Basin during the MSC, support the scenario of a Mediterranean-wide catastrophic flood at the end of the MSC, and suggest that the identified sedimentary body is the largest known megaflood deposit on Earth.
Highlights
The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC) was an outstanding palaeo-oceanographic event that affected the Mediterranean region from 5.97 to 5.33 Ma1
Using pre-stack depth migration (PSDM) seismic velocities of 2.3 and 2.6 km s−1, derived from seismic profiles CROP 21 and Archimede-1610 and typical of moderately consolidated marine sediments, we estimate that unit 2 has a maximum thickness of 760–860 m and volume of 1430–1620 km[3]
Unit 2 cannot be correlated to the Reworked Lower Gypsum (RLG) and associated Mass Transport Complex (MTC) traced in the neighbouring Sirte Gulf[20]
Summary
Aaron Micallef 1, Angelo Camerlenghi[2], Daniel Garcia-Castellanos 3, Daniel Cunarro Otero[1], Marc-André Gutscher[4], Giovanni Barreca[5], Daniele Spatola[1], Lorenzo Facchin[2], Riccardo Geletti[2], Sebastian Krastel[6], Felix Gross6 & Morelia Urlaub 7. We use geological and geophysical data to identify an extensive, buried and chaotic sedimentary body deposited in the western Ionian Basin after the massive Messinian salts and before the Plio-Quaternary open-marine sedimentary sequence. We show that this body is consistent with the passage of a megaflood from the western to the eastern Mediterranean Sea via a south-eastern Sicilian gateway. Our findings provide evidence for a large amplitude drawdown in the Ionian Basin during the MSC, support the scenario of a Mediterranean-wide catastrophic flood at the end of the MSC, and suggest that the identified sedimentary body is the largest known megaflood deposit on Earth. Evidence for deposition of the eroded material has so far been elusive
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