The Alboran volcanic-arc modulated the Messinian faunal exchange and salinity crisis
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Show full item recordEditorial
Springer Nature
Date
2018-08-29Referencia bibliográfica
Booth-Rea, G., Ranero, C. R., & Grevemeyer, I. (2018). The Alboran volcanic-arc modulated the Messinian faunal exchange and salinity crisis. Scientific reports, 8(1), 13015.
Sponsorship
This study was supported by research projects CGL2015-67130-C2-1-R and was part of the EUROMARGINS and TOPO-EUROPE initiatives of the EUROCORES Programme of the European Science Foundation (ESF). Efforts benefitted from funding of the German Science Foundation (DFG grants GR1964/12-1; RA 925/2-1+2-2 and RE 873/17-1).Abstract
What process triggered the Mediterranean Sea restriction remains debated since the discovery of the
Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC). Recent hypotheses infer that the MSC initiated after the closure of
the Atlantic-Mediterranean Betic and Rifean corridors, being modulated through restriction at the
Gibraltar Strait. These hypotheses however, do not integrate contemporaneous speciation patterns
of the faunal exchange between Iberia and Africa and several geological features like the evaporite
distribution. Exchange of terrestrial biota occurred before, during and after the MSC, and speciation
models support an exchange path across the East Alborán basin (EAB) located a few hundreds of km
east of the Gibraltar Strait. Yet, a structure explaining jointly geological and biological observations
has remained undiscovered. We present new seismic data showing the velocity structure of a welldifferentiated
14–17-km thick volcanic arc in the EAB. Isostatic considerations support that the arccrust
buoyancy created an archipelago leading to a filter bridge across the EAB. Sub-aerial erosional
unconformities and onlap relationships support that the arc was active between ~10–6 Ma. Progressive
arc build-up leading to an archipelago and its later subsidence can explain the extended exchange of
terrestrial biota between Iberia and Africa (~7–3 Ma), and agrees with patterns of biota speciation and
terrestrial fossil distribution before the MSC (10–6.2 Ma).