The onshore central Corinth rift contains a syn-rift succession >3 km thick deposited in 5-15 kmwide tilt blocks, all now inactive, uplifted and deeply incised. This part of the rift records upward deepening from fluviatile to lake-margin conditions and finally to sub-lacustrine turbidite channel and lobe complexes, and deep-water lacustrine conditions (Lake Corinth) were established over most of the rift by 3.6 Ma. This succession represents the first of two phases of rift development -Rift 1 from 5.0-3.6 to 2.2-1.8 Ma and Rift 2 from 2.2-1.8 Ma to present. Rift 1 developed as a 30 kmwide zone of distributed normal faulting. The lake was fed by four major N-to NE-flowing antecedent drainages along the southern rift flank. These sourced an axial fluvial system, Gilbert fan deltas and deep lacustrine turbidite channel and lobe complexes. The onset of Rift 2 and abandonment of Rift 1 involved a 30 km northward shift in the locus of rifting. In the west, giant Gilbert deltas built into a deepening lake depocentre in the hanging wall of the newly developing southern border fault system. Footwall and regional uplift progressively destroyed Lake Corinth in the central and eastern parts of the rift, producing a staircase of deltaic and, following drainage reversal, shallow marine terraces descending from >1000 m to present-day sea level. The growth, linkage and death of normal faults during the two phases of rifting are interpreted to reflect self-organization and strain localization along co-linear border faults. In the west, interaction with the Patras rift occurred along the major Patras dextral strike-slip fault. This led to enhanced migration of fault activity, uplift and incision of some early Rift 2 fan deltas, and opening of the Rion Straits at ca. 400-600 ka. The landscape and stratigraphic evolution of the rift was strongly influenced by regional palaeotopographic variations and local antecedent drainage, both inherited from the Hellenide fold and thrust belt.

Mt Chelmos in the Peloponnesus was glaciated by a plateau ice field during the most extensive Pleistocene glaciation. Valley glaciers radiated out from an ice field over the central plateau of the massif. The largest glaciations are likely to be Middle Pleistocene in age. Smaller valley and cirque glaciers formed later and boulders on the moraines of these glacial phases have been dated using 36Cl terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating. These ages indicate a Late Pleistocene age with glacier advance/stabilization at 40–30 ka, glacier retreat at 23–21 ka and advance/stabilization at 13–10 ka. This indicates that the glacial maximum of the last cold stage occurred during Marine Isotope Stage 3, several thousand years before the global Last Glacial Maximum (Marine Isotope Stage 2). The last phase of moraine-building occurred at the end of the Pleistocene, possibly during the Younger Dryas.

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Continental rift deposits contain critical clues concerning the evolution of extensional tectonics, yet such evidence is often obscure due to poor geochronology, burial by younger deposits, or later tectonic overprinting. We revisit Corinth rift development, which began as distributed extension created synrift depocenters with rivers fl owing into shallow (<50 m) lakes. Subsequent focused deformation initiated a "Great Deepening" event, evidenced by fan deltas prograding into 300-600-m-deep water. A chronology is provided for the event from 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of the Xylocastro ash by singlecrystal CO 2 laser fusion, yielding a precise age of 2.550 ± 0.007 Ma (1σ, full error propagation). Sedimentological data indicate that the ash-bearing sediments were deposited as turbidites and hemipelagites on sublacustrine fans fed from the Mavro fan delta at the faulted south-central rift margin. The ash age and turbidite provenance data enable stratigraphic constraints for an estimate of central rift climax occurring between 3.2 and 3.0 Ma. This is some 0.8-1.0 m.y. earlier than radioisotopic-and magnetostratigraphicconstrained estimates for the eastern Corinth rift. Central rift climax was probably triggered by initial counterclockwise rotation of the Peloponnesus block with respect to central Greece. The rotation pole of this block subsequently migrated to its present position as rift climax moved eastward in an "unzipping" action, with the southern active margin also migrating northward. These events are unlikely to be due to local or regional fault kinematics, but rather to the consequences of deep-seated interactions between the rapidly southward-moving Aegean continental forearc and the slowly northward-subducting African oceanic plate. A possible scenario involves forearc "pushback" with décollement on a low-angle subducting lower plate. This causes acceleration and counterclockwise rotation of Peloponnesus with respect to central Greece and strain localization across the boundary; the Corinth rift.

To better understand how fluvial systems respond to late Quaternary climatic forcing OSL and U-series dating was applied to stratigraphically significant sedimentary units within a small (<6.5 km2) alluvial fan system (the Sphakia fan) in southwest Crete. The resultant chronology (comprising 32 OSL and U-series ages) makes Sphakia fan one of the best dated systems in the Mediterranean and suggests that Cretan fans responded to climate in two ways. First, during the transitions between Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5a/4 and MIS 2/1 Sphakia fan was characterised by significant entrenchment and distal shift in the zone of deposition. It is proposed that the phases of entrenchment were driven by sea level induced base level fall during MIS 5a/4 and landscape stabilisation during the onset of the current interglacial (MIS 2/1). Second, with the exception of these two entrenchment episodes fan alluviation occurred across the entire last interglacial/glacial cycle in all climatic settings i.e. interglacials, interstadials and stadials. It is likely that the topographic setting of the catchment supplying sediment to Sphakia fan maintained high sediment transfer rates during most climatic settings enabling fan aggradation to occur except during major climatic driven transitions i.e. major sea level fall and postglacial vegetation development.