The Mediterranean Messinian salinity crisis: an Apennine foredeep perspective

Owing to its expanded stratigraphic sections, the Apennine thrust belt offers the opportunity to better understand the evaporitic and post-evaporitic Messinian events. A physical stratigraphic framework of Messinian deposits, based on facies analysis and basin-wide correlation of key surfaces and sedimentary cycles, is presented. It is shown that the Messinian Apennine foredeep had marginal basins with shallow-water primary evaporites and deeper basins where resedimented evaporites accumulated under relatively deep-water conditions. Like many other Mediterranean examples, primary shallow-water evaporites of Apenninic marginal basins show evidence for subaerial exposure and erosion. However, the development of such an erosional surface does not correspond to the deposition of primary evaporites in the deepest part of the basin(s); here, the unconformity can be traced towards the base of resedimented evaporites or to a level within them, implying that the deeper basins of the Apennine foredeep never underwent desiccation during the Messinian salinity crisis, but rather received the eroded marginal evaporites. This fact, usually overlooked, raises important questions about the deep desiccation model of the Mediterranean.