Quaternary Stratigraphy and Paleogeography of the Galilee Coastal Plain, Israel

Abstract

The Quaternary deposits in the Galilee coastal plain comprise alternating calcareous sandstone, red loam, dark clay, and uncemented sand. The calcareous sandstone in the lower part of the sequence represents a Pliocene to early Pleistocene marine transgression, and is covered unconformably by the late Quaternary sequence. The base of this sequence has an estimated age of ∼500,000 yr. It is covered unconformably by marine calcareous sandstone in the west, which represents the global high sea-level stand of isotope stage 7.1, and is known as one of the “Tyrrhenian” events in the Mediterranean area. The overlying members represent the low sea-level stand of stage 6, the first a red paleosol indicating a relatively wet phase and the second an eolianite unit representing a drier phase. The eolianite forms longitudinal, subparallel ridges that formed contemporaneously. The overlying marine sandstone, which contains one of the diagnostic fossils of the “Tyrrhenian” events, the gastropodStrombus buboniusLMK, accumulated during the global high stand of stage 5.5. The last glacial period left no sedimentary record. The Holocene is represented by a marine clay unit that is covered by sand. The present study establishes a complete and detailed chronostratigraphic sequence for an eastern Mediterranean beach, which contains the gastropodS. buboniusLMK.S. buboniuson the Galilee coast is attributed to stage 5.5 and therefore, establishes an east–west Mediterranean correlation, which can be used for linking Mediterranean events to paleo-sea levels and global climate changes.

Geological and pedological aspects of an Early-Paleolithic site: Revadim, Central Coastal Plain, Israel

“…(Figure 3), were correlated with the so-called "warm-water fauna invasion" or "Strombus beaches" or the "Tyrrhenian Event" in the Mediterranean Reiss and Issar, 1961). Shorelines of these two incursions, scattered along many modern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, were dated by U-series of corals and amino acids as belonging to high-stand sea level phases of Isotope Stage 5 and Stage 7, respectively (Hearty, 1986;Hearty et al, 1986;Poole et al, 1990;Sivan, 1996). The under- Group (after Gvirtzman, et al, 1984 lying marine tongue, the Bat Yam Member, was therefore tentatively correlated with the next older Stage 9, without direct evidence.…”

New perspectives on coastal landscape reconstruction during the Late Quaternary: A test case from central Israel

“…Relative sea levels of the Mediterranean Sea generally track eustatic sea-level changes (Lambeck and Bard, 2000;Galili et al, 2007;Sivan et al, 2016), and it is hypothesised that the Late Pleistocene synoptic regime over the Mediterranean was similar to the present (Enzel et al, 2008). Israel's coast is considered tectonically stable, at least since Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e (Sivan et al, 1999;Galili et al, 2007;Mauz et al, 2013;, with low isostatic uplift rates of about 0.1 mm/year in the Holocene (Sivan et al, 2001;Anzidei et al, 2011;Toker et al, 2012), and about 0.05 mm/year over about the last 125 ka .…”

Stratigraphic units of the Apulian Tavoliere plain (Southern Italy): Chronology, correlation with marine isotope stages and implications regarding vertical movements

“…At a few sites around the Mediterranean, the Tyrrhenian sediments contain C. caespitosa, whose uranium series radiometric ages cluster around isotopic stages 7.1 and 5.5 (Sivan et al, 1999).…”