The late Messinian Lago-Mare event in the Mediterranean Basin: new data from the Messarà Plain (central Crete, Greece).

In the Crete Island, late Messinian Lago-Mare facies are not well known. At present, the occurrence in Crete of the latest Messinian post evaporitic deposits is matter of debate. According to several Authors the well-known late Messinian Lago-Mare facies did not occur in Crete. There, Lower Pliocene open-marine clays of the Finikia Group directly overlie the upper Messinian evaporites of the Hellenikon Group (Dermitzakis et alii, 1979; Frydas, 1998; Fassoulas, 2001).Meulenkamp et alii (1977 and 1979) described continental coarse-grained deposits and lagoonal sediments with Cyprideis pannonica agrigentina Decima (= C. agrigentina) from eastern Crete (Ag. Nicolaos). Moreover, fine-grained deposits with Cyprideis sp. have been, also, detected in a few places of central Crete (Meulenkamp et alii, 1977). The stratigraphic positions of all these Cyprideis-bearing deposits, which occur above upper Messinian gypsum, allow us to consider them as deposited during the late Messinian Lago-Mare event. Within a national research program on the Messinian/Zanclean boundary in the Mediterranean Region, which is financially supported by MIUR (Ministry of University and Scientific Research of Italy), geological studies have been started in Crete in the last year, to analyse the Miocene/Pliocene transition in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. The aim of this paper is to show the preliminary results obtained from the analyses of some stratigraphical sections sampled in the Messarà Plain. The ostracod assemblage found in the Messarà Plain belongs to the Loxoconcha djafarovi Zone (sensu Carbonnel, 1978), which characterizes the uppermost Messinian deposits of the whole Mediterranean Basin. At that time, the well-known Lago-Mare biofacies was widespread on the Crete Island also. The presence of Paratethyan ostracods in the post-evaporitic Messinian deposits of both Faneromeni and Kasteli-Ano Akria sections suggests that in the latest Messinian Crete Island was affected by sedimentation processes in brackish water palaeoenvironments.