Abstract
As the Messinian sea-level draw down associated with the Messinian Salinity Crisis is still questioned, we propose to show that the widely spread erosion surface affecting the Mediterranean margins is indeed linked to an exondation demonstrated from offshore and onshore data. Our study presents a comprehensive onshore to offshore correlation of the Messinian erosional surface. It is focused on small drainage systems or interfluve areas, outside of evaporite basins or incised canyons, where the Messinian erosion had not yet been studied previously: around Ibiza on the Balearic Promontory and around Orosei on the Eastern Sardinian margin, Tyrrhenian Basin, both areas where new offshore data were recently acquired. We show that the late Messinian erosion formed in subaerial settings, as testified by evidence of continentalization events, and attests for a regression phase that was correlated from the offshore continental slopes to the onshore paleo-platforms in both areas. Characteristics of this erosion in both study areas strengthen the scenario with at least one important low-stand sea-level for the Messinian Salinity Crisis with evaporites subbasins lying at different depths and possibly disconnected.
Highlights
The Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) in the Western Mediterranean Sea resulted first in evaporites precipitation in peripheral shallow basins (“Primary Lower Gypsum”: PLG)
The extension of the MES has been followed all along the northwestern Mediterranean margins (Fig. 1), in the framework of an integrated study of several key-areas in different settings (Lofi et al, 2011, 2018). In this scientific context and with a land-sea approach, we focused on two areas, respectively, the Balearic Promontory to the West, and the Eastern Sardinian margin in the Tyrrhenian Basin to the East; both areas where the offshore MES has already been studied (Maillard et al, 2014; Driussi et al, 2015; Lymer et al, 2018)
We investigated the lateral continuity of the MES through mapping the erosional surface at the base of the marine Pliocene deposits in northeastern Sardinia and by the detailed stratigraphic analysis of the late Neogene deposits in northeastern Ibiza Island (Lézin et al, 2014, 2017; Giresse et al, 2015)
Summary
The Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) in the Western Mediterranean Sea resulted first in evaporites precipitation in peripheral shallow basins (“Primary Lower Gypsum”: PLG). Evaporite precipitation shifted to the deepest depocentres in the central bathyal domains with a “deep basin trilogy”; Hsü et al, 1973; Ryan and Cita, 1978; Lofi et al, 2011; Manzi et al, 2018), while erosion affected Mediterranean drainage areas with incisions of deep subaerial valleys (Chumakov, 1973; Clauzon, 1973; Barber, 1981; Savoye and Piper, 1991) This erosion is observed offshore over most of the present-day Mediterranean margins as a widespread surface at the base of the Pliocene-Quaternary series and incising in the pre-MSC series, called the Margin Erosion Surface (MES) (Guennoc et al, 2000; Lofi et al, 2005; Bache et al, 2009; Lofi et al, 2011). The correlation of the MES between the offshore continental slopes and the onshore paleo-platforms in both areas can be proposed
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