MIS 5e sea-level proxies in the eastern Mediterranean coastal region

Abstract

Abstract. Mediterranean raised beaches were subject to Quaternary research since the early years of the 20th century. The uniqueness of a warm-loving molluscs fauna immigrating into the Mediterranean made the coastline a prime subject for studying Quaternary sea-level changes. Today, we have a detailed picture of this historically important coastline characterised by tectonically dormant coastal zone alternating with zones that are subject to subsidence or uplift. As part of the Word Atlas of last interglacial shorelines (WALIS) database we compiled 21 MIS 5e proxies for the for the eastern Mediterranean area available at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4274178 (Israel; Sivan and Galili, 2020) and at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4283819 (Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia; Mauz, 2020). All these datapoints are sea-level indicators of variable quality situated between −1 ± 4 m and 7 ± 2 m resulting in a reconstructed MIS 5e palaeo-sea level situated between −1 ± 4 m and 13 ± 10 m.

Sedimentology and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the late Pleistocene deposits along the Bizerte Coast, N-E Tunisia

“…The suc ces sion commonlly be gins with con glom er atic fa cies as so ci ated with sea level rise. The palaeosea level was around 8 ±5m dur ing MIS 5e (Sahli et al, 2019;Mauz et al, 2020). This rise in sea level brought in decimetre-to centi metre-sized peb bles and an abun dant marine fauna.…”

The World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (Version 1.0)

“…There seem to be little to no studies on the coastal Quaternary of Libya, except for one site near Alexandria inserted in WALIS 1.0 (Mauz and Elmejdoub, 2021). While sites in Israel and Cyprus have been inserted in WALIS 1.0 (Sivan and Galili, 2020;Zomeni, 2021), there are no sites in WALIS for Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. In these areas, Last Interglacial sea-level proxies are reported in the literature (e.g., Sanlaville, 1974;Dodonov et al, 2008;Tarı et al, 2018;Gaki-Papanastassiou et al, 2009) and should be screened to gauge whether enough metadata are available for their insertion in the following versions of WALIS.…”