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Messinian salinity crisis regulated by competing tectonics and erosion at the Gibraltar arc

Nature volume 480, pages 359–363 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Messinian salinity crisis1,2 (5.96 to 5.33 million years ago) was caused by reduced water inflow from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea resulting in widespread salt precipitation and a decrease in Mediterranean sea level of about 1.5 kilometres due to evaporation3. The reduced connectivity between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the time of the salinity crisis is thought to have resulted from tectonic uplift of the Gibraltar arc seaway and global sea-level changes, both of which control the inflow of water required to compensate for the hydrological deficit of the Mediterranean1,4. However, the different timescales on which tectonic uplift and changes in sea level occur are difficult to reconcile with the long duration of the shallow connection between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic5 needed to explain the large amount of salt precipitated. Here we use numerical modelling to show that seaway erosion caused by the Atlantic inflow could sustain such a shallow connection between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean by counteracting tectonic uplift. The erosion and uplift rates required are consistent with previous mountain erosion studies, with the present altitude of marine sediments in the Gibraltar arc6,7 and with geodynamic models suggesting a lithospheric slab tear underneath the region8,9,10. The moderate Mediterranean sea-level drawdown during the early stages of the Messinian salinity crisis3,5 can be explained by an uplift of a few millimetres per year counteracted by similar rates of erosion due to Atlantic inflow. Our findings suggest that the competition between uplift and erosion can result in harmonic coupling between erosion and the Mediterranean sea level, providing an alternative mechanism for the cyclicity observed in early salt precipitation deposits and calling into question previous ideas regarding the timing of the events that occurred during the Messinian salinity crisis1.

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Figure 1: Competition between uplift and erosion along the last corridor connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean during stage 1 of the MSC.
Figure 2: Calculated evolution of the reference model resulting from competition between seaway uplift and erosion.
Figure 3: Parameterization of the competition between uplift and erosion.
Figure 4: Geodynamic interpretation of the results invokes the lateral migration of a tearing 8 of the lithospheric slab originally attached to the south Iberian margin.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Meijer, S. Giralt, L. Matenco and C. Ayora for comments and criticisms on earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was funded by the Spanish government through the projects ATIZA (CGL2009-09662), TopoAtlas (CGL2006-05493), TopoMed (CGL2008-03474-E/BTE) and TopoIberia (CSD2006-00041).

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  1. Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra Jaume Almera, CSIC, Solé i Sabarís s/n, 08028 Barcelona, Spain,

    D. Garcia-Castellanos & A. Villaseñor

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  1. D. Garcia-Castellanos
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Contributions

D.G.-C. planned the study, performed the modelling and wrote the paper; A.V. processed and interpreted the seismic data and tomography; and both authors interpreted and discussed the results.

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Correspondence to D. Garcia-Castellanos.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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The source code developed for the calculations can be downloaded from https://sites.google.com/site/daniggcc/research-interests/messinian.

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Garcia-Castellanos, D., Villaseñor, A. Messinian salinity crisis regulated by competing tectonics and erosion at the Gibraltar arc. Nature 480, 359–363 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10651

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