Abstract
The «area 3» (i. e. an océanographie investigation area) of the Mediterranean Ridge is typical of the Ionian Sea «cobblestone topography». It has been the objet of the R/V campaigns .'Melville (1978), Eastward (1978) and Bannock (1981). The bathymetrical and geological data gathered during these three cruises allow the determination of the age and the interpretation of the genesis of the two enigmatic landforms of the submarine bottoms : the «Ares crater» and the «Prometheus dome». The karstic (or submarine karst) origin — direct or indirect - proposed as hypothesis in order to explain this closed depression hollow, cannot be maintained anymore. Actually this is the result of the extrusion to the surface of the Mid-Cretaceous «argille scagliose». The diapirism affecting the incompétent material squeezed from deep levels of the sedimentary cover, looks as being attributable to the compression undergone by the Mediterranean Ridge. The event is post Pliocene/ lower Pleistocene which found themselves affected and earlier than sapropel S 8 that fossilizes the extrusion, within the depression. This extrusion is diachronous since the Prometheus dome - made of the same materiel — results from an even earlier setting, slightly anterior to 40 000 BP.
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