High-amplitude water-level fluctuations at the end of the Mediterranean Messinian Salinity Crisis: Implications for gypsum formation, connectivity and global climate

Andreetto, Federico; Flecker, Rachel; Aloisi, Giovanni; Mancini, Alan Maria; Guibourdenche, Laetitia; Villiers, Stephanie de; Krijgsman, Wout

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117767

Cited by 10 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(131 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This means that the marine replenishment occurred rather catastrophically in the Adriatic Basin, following a Mediterranean water level rise of several hundreds of meters. The occurrence of shallow-water, Biofacies 2 ostracods just below the M/P boundary at Eraclea Minoa (Andreetto et al, 2022a) and in ODP Site 975B, which was at >2000 mbsl during the MSC (Heida et al, 2022), are an indication that the water level in the Mediterranean was extremely low when the marine replenishment took place, therefore supporting its catastrophic nature following the sudden breaching of the Gibraltar Strait (see Micallef et al, 2018 andGarcia-Castellanos et al, 2020).…”

Section: Restoration Of the Adriatic Seamentioning

confidence: 94%

“…#7 in the Eraclea Minoa section; Fig. 4.8;Andreetto et al, 2022a). 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios from Member C of the Pollenzo section (0.708746-0.708834) were successfully demonstrated to have not been acquired by the ostracod valves in an endorheic lake, because these values are substantially different from the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signature of the Po River, which integrates the dissolved solutes provided by the lithologies forming the Alps and Northern (Cicchella et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Caspian-style Brackish Water Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Time equivalent sections in central Mediterranean basins comprise up to 7 gypsum-marl couplets of the Upper Gypsum unit, best exposed in the Caltanissetta Basin on Sicily (Manzi et al, 2009). The UG marls on Sicily record high diversity Paratethyan ostracod assemblages (Biofacies 2) from 5.47 Ma (Andreetto et al, 2022a). Along the margins, where fluvial conglomerates-sandstones alternate with marls, the first known occurrence of Paratethyan ostracods is in the Nijar Basin (unpublished data; see Appendix I, p. 290), where it is dated at ~5.43 Ma (Hilgen et al, 2007) or ~5.41 Ma (Omodeo Salé et al, 2012.…”

Section: Birth Of the Adriatic Megalakementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The occurrence of Paratethyan ostracods in the same precession cycle in the Nijar Basin, which had an estimated (maximum) paleodepth of ~250 m during the Early Zanclean (and therefore, possibly, during the latest Messinian), and in the >600 m deep (Sgarrella et al, 1997(Sgarrella et al, , 1999Barra et al, 1998) Caltanissetta Basin (and even deeper localities such as the Balearic slope; provides us with an ecological marker for precession-paced, high magnitude fluctuations of the Lago-Mare water level. As a matter of fact, the Paratethyan fauna entered the marginal basins of the Mediterranean during highstands, whereas it colonized deeper settings during lowstands (Andreetto et al, 2022a). The absence of both gypsum and ostracods in the Adriatic region, despite the fact that its subbasins are thought to have had similar paleodepths (600-1000 m; Gennari et al, 2008;Violanti et al, 2009) to those of the Caltanissetta Basin, suggests that prior to the first occurrence of ostracods at Maccarone at ~5.36 Ma, the water level in the Mediterranean was never high enough to spill over the Otranto and/or Gargano sill into the Adriatic Basin.…”

Section: Birth Of the Adriatic Megalakementioning

confidence: 99%

“…ratios imply mixing between local, continental runoff and Lago-Mare waters from the open Mediterranean (Andreetto et al, 2022b), that had a less radiogenic 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signature than the global ocean (0.7087-0.7088) due to the mixing of a substantial amount of low radiogenic Apennines, were the catchments are located (Marchina et al, 2018), at any point of its course (Andreetto et al, 2022b). These 87 Sr/ 86 Sr non-marine water from the Paratethys and the large rivers with little, higher radiogenic Atlantic seawater (Andreetto et al, 2022a). The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios measured on ostracod valves from the Pollenzo section therefore suggest the establishment of an at least unidirectional Mediterranean-Adriatic connection and the at least temporary cessation of the isolation of the Adriatic megalake from the Mediterranean at ~5.36 Ma.…”

Section: The Caspian-style Brackish Water Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Birth, evolution and demise of the Mediterranean Lago-Mare

Andreetto¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Mediterranean Sea is a large sea almost completely enclosed by Europe, Africa, and SW Asia. Today, the continuous flow of Atlantic seawater through the Strait of Gibraltar balances the net water loss due to the excess of evaporation over input from rain and rivers and keeps the Mediterranean a marine basin with the water level equal to the global ocean level. In the late Miocene, the input of Atlantic seawater was through shallow gateways in southern Spain and northern Morocco. The exhumation of the Betic and Rif Cordilleras and orbitally-controlled regional climate change contributed to the step-by-step close these marine gateways and transformed the Mediterranean into an inhospitable evaporitic sea, starting at 5.96±0.02 Ma. The environmental and hydrological crisis that followed, known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis, peaked at ~5.55 Ma, when a 1.5-2 km-thick salt layer precipitated on the sea floor, and terminated at ~5.332 Ma, when normal marine conditions were re-established, perhaps as a consequence of catastrophic flooding at Gibraltar. The transitional interval from the giant salina to Mediterranean Sea that resembles what we know today is known as the Lago-Mare phase. Gypsum and brackish water biota from the Central Paratethys (approximately coinciding with the present-day Hungary-Slovenia) are both characteristic of Lago-Mare successions. This sedimentary and paleontological evidence suggest that the Mediterranean, during the Lago-Mare phase, experienced a complex history of inter- and extrabasinal connections, base-level fluctuations and extreme environmental and biological changes. This thesis aims to reconstruct the fiercely debated Mediterranean water level changes and identify the hydrological fluxes responsible for these Lago-Mare environmental and biological turnover events. It focuses on key sections exposed on-land and recovered from deep sea cores along an E-W transect across the Mediterranean with a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates biocyclostratigraphic analyses with high-resolution Sr-isotope ratios. The new data show that the Lago-Mare phase was a far more dynamic period of the Mediterranean history than previously thought. Large areas of the Mediterranean were occupied by an anomalohaline water mass predominantly formed by low-salinity waters from the Eastern Paratethys (i.e. the present-day Black-Caspian seas) and from the larger circum-Mediterranean rivers such as the Nile, the Rhône and currently dried North-African rivers. A small and possibly episodic Atlantic flux was a minor contributor. The regular variability of the Mediterranean’s freshwater budget with the astronomic precession combined with fluctuating Atlantic inflow and negligible outflow resulted in a Mediterranean base level that oscillated dramatically, but consistently below eustatic sea level. These precession-paced fluctuations caused the low-salinity Paratethyan biota to colonize the marginal areas of the Mediterranean at times of high base level and central areas during phases of low base level, gypsum to precipitate only in the deeper basins during the regressive phases and silled regions such as the Adriatic and the North Aegean to exist for long as some of the largest endorheic lakes.

show abstract