Search results for "late Quaternary"
showing 5 items of 15 documents
The Middle-Late Quaternary littoral deposits of Western Sicily coastal belt (southern Italy): sedimentology and geomorphology
A multidisciplinary study has been carried out on the littoral deposits located along the western Sicily coastal belt, central Mediterranean region, with the aim of unravelling their origin and evolution through analysis of their lithology, texture, sedimentary structures, and geomorphological features. The deposits crop out between the towns of Trapani and Marsala and are distributed from the present-day coastline up to 120 m above sea level, forming four major discrete ridges in the landscape, each of separated by topographic depressions with flat or slightly concave upwards surfaces. The ridges ranging between 5 to 30 m in height, display a NNE-SSW trend almost parallel to the present-da…
YTTRIUM AND REE SIGNATURE RECOGNIZED IN CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN SEA (ODP SITE 963) DURING THE MIS 6 – MIS 5 TRANSITION
2010
The Mediterranean Sea acts as a miniature ocean with the development of its own conveyor belt. It constitutes an ideal location to study and forecast how the marine environment responds to rapid climatic change. Here we present a palaeoenvironmental study carried out on the sediments of ODP Site 963, recovered in the Sicily Channel, the sill which divides the western from the eastern Mediterranean basin. We focused on the transition between the penultimate glacial (MIS 6) and the last interglacial (MIS 5), between approximately 130 and 115 kyr BP. A novel approach is proposed, taking into account centennial-scale geochemical data on major elements, selected trace elements, and yttrium and R…
Mediterranean coccolith ecobiostratigraphy since the penultimate Glacial (the last 145,000years) and ecobioevent traceability
2015
The Mediterranean Sea is a miniature ocean ideal to test the response of marine ecosystems to amplified orbital and suborbital climate changes. Here we present coccolith data from a Sardinia Channel gravity core (Arcose C_33) analysed over the last 145,000 years, with a mean resolution of about 900 years. The study highlights that regional phytoplankton assemblages underwent significant modifications between the penultimate glacial and the last interglacial, as well as between the last glacial and the Holocene. The N ratio palaeoproductivity index suggests reduced productivity levels and the development of a deep nutricline during the last interglacial and the Holocene. Within the last glac…
Vertical movements in NE Sicily and its offshore: Outcome of tectonic uplift during the last 125 ky
2013
New data in the coastal area between Acquedolci and Patti (northeastern Sicily, Italy) have been collected to calculate vertical tectonic rates in a key sector between the Kabilian-Calabrian and the Sicilian-Maghrebian chain. The comparison among marine geology data (multibeam and seismic reflection profiles) on the continental shelf-slope system and the radiocarbon ages on geomorphological markers collected during a coastal survey, provided new stratigraphic, geomorphological and biological data, contributing to the knowledge of the geological evolution of this sector for the last 125 ky.This coastal area is framed between two main structural features active during the Pleistocene in north…
Late Quaternary marine ostracods of the Basque Basin (S Bay of Biscay): taxonomy and distribution
2018
Late Quaternary taxonomy and ecologic and age distributions of ostracods from the Basque Basin (S Bay of Biscay) are described. More than forty-four thousands ostracod specimens have been obtained from one hundred surface samples and core samples from six cores located in shelf and upper bathyal depths and other infrabathyal core as comparative deep reference. A total of 155 species have been taxonomically described, belonging to 67 genera. Most characteristic species (123) have been SEM figured, and ecologic-geographic distributions and ages have been provided for all species. The resulting database will be a useful help for palaeoceanographic and palaeoclimatologic studies of the region.