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INIZIO_TESTO_DA_INDICIZZARE

RESEARCH PROGRAM

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Scientific and education field classification
International Patent Classification
  • FIXED CONSTRUCTIONS
    • EARTH DRILLING; MINING
      • EARTH DRILLING, e.g. DEEP DRILLING (mining, quarrying E21C; making shafts, driving galleries or tunnels E21D); OBTAINING OIL, GAS, WATER, SOLUBLE OR MELTABLE MATERIALS OR A SLURRY OF MINERALS FROM WELLS
      • MINING OR QUARRYING
  • HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • PHYSICS
    • MEASURING (counting G06M); TESTING
      • GEOPHYSICS; GRAVITATIONAL MEASUREMENTS; DETECTING MASSES OR OBJECTS (detecting or locating foreign bodies for diagnostic, surgical or person-identification purposes A61B; means for indicating the location of accidentally buried, e.g. snow-buried persons A63B29/02; investigating or analysing earth materials by determining their chemical or physical properties G01N; measuring electric or magnetic variables in general, other than direction or magnitude of the earth\'s field G01R; electronic or nuclear magnetic resonance arrangements G01R33/20; radar, sonar or analogous methods in general, detecting masses or objects involving these methods G01S)
Geographical classification
Bibliografia
Bertini A., Londeix L., Maniscalco R., di Stefano A., Suc J.P., Clauzon G., Gautier F., Grasso M., 1998. Paleobiological evidence of depositional conditions in the Salt Member, Gessoso-Solfifera Formation (Messinian, Upper Miocene) of Sicily according to new paleobiological records. Micropal. 44, 413-433
Bertini, A., 1994. Messinian-Zanclean vegetation and climate in North–Central Italy. Hist. Biol. 9, 3-10
Blanc P.L., 2000. Of sill and straits: a quantitative assessment of the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Deep-Sea Res., 47, 1429-1460
Blanc P.L., 2002. The opening of the Plio-Quaternary Gibraltar Strait: assessing the size of a cataclysm. Geodin. Acta, 15, 303-317
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Braga J.C., Martin J.M, Riding R., Aguirre J., Sanchez-Almazo I., Dinarés-Turell J., in press. Testing models for the Messinian salinity crisis: The Messinian record in Almería, SE Spain. Sed. Geol.
Butler R.W.H. & Grasso M.,1993. Tectonic controls on base-level variations and depositional sequences within thrust-top and foredeep basins: Examples from the Neogene thrust belt of central Sicily. Basin Res., 5,137-151
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Clauzon G., 1982. Le canyon messinien du Rhone: une preuve decisive du "desiccated deep-basin model". Bull. Soc. Geol. France, vol. 34, 597-610
Clauzon G., Suc J.P., Gautier F., Berger A. & Loutre M.F., 1996. Alternate interpretation of the Messinian salinity crisis: Controversy resolved? Geology, 24, 363-366
Decima A., 1976. Initial data on the bromine distribution in the Miocene Salt Formation of Southern Sicily. Mem. Soc. Geol. It., Messinian evaporites in the Mediterranean-Erice Seminar, 1975. 16, 39-43.
Decima A. & Wezel F.C., 1973. Late Miocene evaporites of the Central Sicilian Basin, in (W.B.F. Ryan, K.J. Hsu, and others, eds.): Init. Rep. D.S.D.P., Leg 13, 1234-1240.
Decima A., McKenzie J.A. & Schreiber B.C.,1988. The origin of "evaporite" limestones: an example from the Messinian of Sicily (Italy). JSP, 58,256-272.
Fauquette S., Suc J.-P., Bertini A., Popescu S.-M., Warny S., Bachiri Taoufiq N., Perez Villa M.-J., Ferrier J., Chikhi H., Subally D., Feddi N. & Clauzon G., (in press). How much the climate forced the Messinian salinity crisis? Quantified climatic conditions from pollen records in the Mediterranean region. Palaeo3.
Garcia-Veigas J., Orti F., Rosell L., Ayora C., Rouchy J.M. & Lugli S. 1995. The Messinian salt of the Mediterranean: geochemical study of the salt from the Central Sicily Basin and comparison with the Lorca Basin (Spain). Bull. Soc. Géol. France, 166, 699-710.
Hardie L.A. & Lowenstein T.K., 2004. Did the Mediterranean Sea dry out during the Miocene? A reassessment of the evaporite evidence from DSDP Legs 13 and 42A cores. JSR, 74, 453-461.
Hilgen F.J. & Krijgsman W., 1999. Cyclostratigraphy and astrochronology of the Tripoli diatomite Formation (pre-evaporite Messinian, Sicily, Italy). Terra Nova, 11, 16-22.
Hsu K.J., Ryan W.B.F. & Cita M.B., 1973. Late Miocene desiccation of the Mediterranean. Nature, 242, 240-244.
Iaccarino S., Castradori D., Cita M.B., Di Stefano E., Gaboardi S., McKenzie J.A., Spezzaferri S. & Sprovieri R., 1999. The Miocene/Pliocene boundary and the significance of the earliest Pliocene flooding in the Mediterranean. Mem. SGI, 54, 109-131
Kastens K., 1992. Did a glacio-eustatic sealevel drop trigger the Messinian salinity crisis? New evidence from ODP Site 654 in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Paleoceanography, 7, 333-356
Krijgsman W., Hilgen F.J., Raffi I., Sierro F.J. & Wilson D.S., 1999b. Chronology, causes and progression of the Messinian salinity crisis. Nature, 400, 652-655
Krijgsman W., Gaboardi S., Hilgen F.J., Iaccarino S., de Kaenel E. & van der Laan E., 2004. Revised astrochronology for the Ain el Beida section (Atlantic Morocco): no glacio-eustatic control for the onset of the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Stratigraphy, 1, 87-101
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Meulenkamp J.E. & Sissingh W., 2003. Tertiary palaeogeography and tectonostratigraphic evolution of the Northern and Southern Peri-Tethys platforms and the intermediate domains of the African–Eurasian convergent plate boundary zone. Palaeo3, 196, 209-228.
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Keywords
MESSINIAN SALINITY CRISIS, EVAPORITES, OROGENIC BASINS, MEDITERRANEAN SEA, STRATIGRAPHY, HALITE, TECTONOSTRATIGRAPHY, PALAEOGEOGRAPHY, PALAEOCLIMATOLOGY

Origin, timing and facies distribution of the Messinian Salt deposits in the basins of the central Mediterranean area (Sicily, Calabria and Tuscany) and their larger-scale implications for the Messinian salinity crisis

Università degli Studi di Parma
Abstract
More than thirty years after the formulation of the deep-desiccated basin model (Hsu et al., 1973), the origin, timing and depositional setting of the giant Messinian Salt bodies buried below the deep Western and Eastern Mediterranean basins is still unknown and many uncertainties persist concerning their genetic and stratigraphic relationships with peripheral basins successions. This led to the production of several working models of the Messinian salinity crisis which appear to be variants of the deep-desiccated basin model. The scientific community is waiting for the drilling of a borehole able to reach the base of deep evaporites and to give the appropriate answers to many unsolved problems. Nonetheless, such a project will still probably take a relatively long time to be carried out; moreover, halokinetic processes could have masked their primary depositional features of salt, thus possibly making it more difficult to achieve some of the expected results.
For this reason we believe that it would be important to deepen the knowledge of those salt deposits formed in different geodynamic contexts on the floor of the Mediterranean basins, uplifted after their deposition and now buried at shallow depths that allow their direct study in mine galleries and cores. This is the case of the salt units preserved in the basins of the Apenninic-Maghrebid thrust belt mainly in Sicily, Calabria and Tuscany. In particular, the central Sicilian basins have always been of great >>>

Principal Investigator
Marco Roveri Università degli Studi di PARMA
Research Objectives
This project is designed to improve the general knowledge concerning one specific and fundamental problem of the Messinian salinity crisis: the chronology and modalities of deposition of the giant salt bodies occurring in several basins from the different geotectonic contexts within the Mediterranean area. These deposits, only known through seismic, borehole and mine gallery observations, are still poorly understood in terms of 1) depositional processes and settings (marine/non marine, deep-water/shallow-water), 2) chronology (onset of deposition, total time elapsed, relationships with cyclical forcing), 3) genetic and stratigraphic relationships with adjacent Messinian evaporitic (primary and/or clastic) and terrigenous units.
This question remains a strong obstacle to the full comprehension of the complex of palaeoenvironmental changes related to the Messinian salinity crisis, especially to the efforts for palaeohydrologic and palaeoclimatic modelling.
As a matter of fact, the stratigraphic uncertainties weaken all the attempts to reconstruct the Messinian palaeogeographic setting of the Mediterranean, and, as a consequence, the formulation of reliable and accepted evolutionary models of the MSC.
The project aims to contribute to such problems through the study of the salt bodies of some of the Messinian basins of Sicily, Calabria and Tuscany. For many of such basins, the integration of core data, direct mine gallery observations, seismic and surface >>>

Timescale
24 months
National and international background
More than thirty years after the formulation of a unifying theory for the Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), the so called "deep-basin desiccation model" (Hsu et al., 1973), several aspects are still not fully understood (Hardie and Lowenstein, 2004).
A crucial point is the nature and age of the giant salt deposits buried under the deepest Mediterranean basins, imaged by seismic data but never drilled by boreholes, except for their uppermost part (Hsu et al., 1973).
These deposits have been classically subdivided into three seismostratigraphic units that from the bottom are: Lower Evaporites, Messinian Salt and Upper Evaporites; only the latter have been reached by DSDP and ODP boreholes. The deep-desiccation theory considers that both the Lower Evaporites and Messinian Salt (total thickness > 3000 m) formed through direct precipitation from very shallow waters during the desiccation stage of the Mediterranean basin. This requires a sea-level fall in excess of 1500 metres, leading to the widespread development along the continental margins of a subaerial erosional surface (MES) with deeply incised canyons in front of the main river systems (Ryan & Cita, 1978; Clauzon, 1982).
Due to the lack of direct observation data from the lower evaporitic complex and the underlying deposits, their deep vs shallow-water nature as well as the chronology of Messinian events are object of speculations.
A very high degree of attention and >>>