Abstract High-resolution cyclostratigraphy and calcareous plankton astrobiochronology have been obtained from the latest Langhian to the earliest Tortonian of the Mediterranean. The investigated areas (Malta, Tremiti, and Sicily) are located in different geological settings, and the three studied sections show different cyclicity. Direct correlation between the Laskar 90 (1.1) solution of the insolation curve and the sedimentary cycle pattern occurring in the investigated sections showed that all the sedimentary cycles are forced dominantly by Milankovitch periodicity. This forcing is also reflected in the climate-sensitive data (CaCO 3 content, and the relative abundance of the planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ) as shown by the application of spectral and filtering analyses. The calibration provided astronomical ages for all the sedimentary cycles and bioevents recorded in the sections. In particular, an age of 13.59 Ma was obtained for the extinction level of Sphenolithus heteromorphus , which is the best event approximating the Langhian-Serravallian boundary and an age of 10.55 Ma for the first regular occurrence of Neogloboquadrina acostaensis , the event that better approximates the Serravallian-Tortonian boundary in the Tortonian type section.

ABSTRACT Large-scale correlations and sequence stratigraphic analyses have been carried out in the central Mediterranean region, a tectonically active area crossing the extensional margin of the southern Tyrrhenian, the compressional front of the Siculo-Maghrebian Tertiary chain and the North African foreland. The Plio-Pleistocene marine record has been subdivided in sequences and systems tracts on the basis of both original data and correlations. We provide seismic, well-log and outcrop data supporting the occurrence of regional unconformities of constant age, related to glacio-eustatic oscillations. Evidence of transgressive-regressive facies cycles having different orders of duration, major erosional truncations and basin starvation events contributed to the construction of a new sea-level cycle chart based on the available Mediterranean high-resolution biochronology and magnetostratigraphy. We largely used the deep-sea correlative conformities of sequence boundaries in order to improve the age calibration of the cycle chart. The chart, based on a new Plio-Pleistocene time scale, can resolve boundary ages up to 5th-order paracycles based on correlations to the high-frequency oscillations of the deep-sea record. Outcrop evidence of correlations between individual parasequences and 41 ky astronomical and climatic oscillations of the deep-sea record is supported by high-resolution biochronology. A comparison with the Mediterranean Plio-Pleistocene sequence chart confirms the general validity of the Gulf of Mexico cycle chart of Wornardt and Vail (1991), except for minor differences in age and number of 4th-order sequences. The sequence stratigraphic subdivisions are recognizable even in active sectors where stratal analysis separates the eustatic from the tectonic component; from this perspective, our experience support the regional synchroneity of sequences and systems tracts occurring in the studied interval independently of local tectonic factors.