@misc{10481/61488,
year = {2019},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/61488},
abstract = {The evaporites of the Realmonte salt mine (Sicily, Italy) are important archives recording the most extreme conditions of
the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC). However, geochemical approach on these evaporitic sequences is scarce and little is
known on the response of the biological community to drastically elevating salinity. In the present work, we investigated
the depositional environments and the biological community of the shale–anhydrite–halite triplets and the K–Mg salt
layer deposited during the peak of the MSC. Both hopanes and steranes are detected in the shale–anhydrite–halite
triplets, suggesting the presence of eukaryotes and bacteria throughout their deposition. The K–Mg salt layer is
composed of primary halites, diagenetic leonite, and primary and/or secondary kainite, which are interpreted to have
precipitated from density-stratified water column with the halite-precipitating brine at the surface and the brineprecipitating
K–Mg salts at the bottom. The presence of hopanes and a trace amount of steranes implicates that
eukaryotes and bacteria were able to survive in the surface halite-precipitating brine even during the most extreme
condition of the MSC.},
organization = {This work was performed with the support of Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellowship (16 J07844) to YI and
JAMSTEC President Fund to NO.},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
keywords = {Messinian Salinity Crisis},
keywords = {Evaporites},
keywords = {Kainite},
keywords = {Biomarker},
title = {Biomarker records and mineral compositions of the Messinian halite and K–Mg salts from Sicily},
doi = {10.1186/s40645-019-0306-x},
author = {Isaji, Yuta and Jiménez-Espejo, Francisco José},
}