Abstract The submerged sill in the Strait of Messina, which is located today at a minimum depth of 81 m below sea level (bsl), represents the only land connection between Sicily and mainland Italy (and thus Europe) during the last lowstand when the sea level locally stood at about 126 m bsl. Today, the sea crossing to Sicily, although it is less than 4 km at the narrowest point, faces hazardous sea conditions, made famous by the myth of Scylla and Charybdis. Through a multidisciplinary research project, we document the timing and mode of emergence of this land connection during the last 40 kyr. The integrated analysis takes into consideration morphobathymetric and lithological data, and relative sea-level change (both isostatic and tectonic), resulting in the hypothesis that a continental land bridge lasted for at least 500 years between 21.5 and 20 cal ka BP. The emergence may have occurred over an even longer time span if one allows for seafloor erosion by marine currents that have lowered the seabed since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Modelling of palaeotidal velocities shows that sea crossings when sea level was lower than present would have faced even stronger and more hazardous sea currents than today, supporting the hypothesis that earliest human entry into Sicily most probably took place on foot during the period when the sill emerged as dry land. This hypothesis is compared with an analysis of Pleistocene vertebrate faunas in Sicily and mainland Italy, including a new radiocarbon date on bone collagen of an Equus hydruntinus specimen from Grotta di San Teodoro (23–21 cal ka BP), the dispersal abilities of the various animal species involved, particularly their swimming abilities, and the Palaeolithic archaeological record, all of which support the hypothesis of a relatively late land-based colonization of Sicily by Homo sapiens .

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.

Abstract Environments that may result in deposition of evaporites occur in a sedimentary continuum which begins in the subaerial continental environment and extends into a hypersaline sea. The evaporitic sedimentary sequence of latest Miocene (Messinian) age, near Salemi, Sicily, contains carbonate rocks, argil I ites and gypsum that are compared with sediments in a modern salina at Salina Santa Margherita di Savoia, Italy. Fine-scale similarities between sediments of the salina and those of the section at Salemi provide a basis for interpretation of ancient evaporites. The Messinian evaporites developed in a small basin during the pan-Mediterranean salinity crisis; they contain a vertical facies succession that follows the facies association observed in the working salina. By using the horizontal sedimentary sequence in the salina as a model record of evaporation of an ancient hypersaline water body, it becomes possible to relate certain textures of gypsum sediments to their paleoenvironments of deposition and other textures to post-depositional alterations.