High-resolution multi proxy records across the Plio-Pleistocene boundary: a central Mediterranean perspective

The central Mediterranean region is traditionally acknowledged as a key reference area for investigating the Northern Hemisphere climate variability over the last few million years.

Specifically, the expanded and highly fossiliferous open-marine succession currently exposed along the shoreline of Southern Italy and Sicily offers a pristine sedimentary record of the Neogene to Quaternary interval, which can be tightly constrained in time and deeply investigated by means of a manifold array of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic proxies (e.g., Cita et al., 2008; Capraro et al., 2017, 2022).

In this context, the Monte San Nicola (MSN) section, located in Southern Sicily, provides an exceptional stratigraphic record for studying the climate evolution throughout the Piacenzian to Gelasian interval. The MSN succession hosts the GSSP for the Gelasian Stage (ca. 2.58 Ma; Rio et al., 1998), which presently marks the base of both the Pleistocene Serie and the Quaternary System (Head et al., 2008). The section is currently under revision, especially in the interval straddling the Gelasian GSSP, which includes the definitive establishment of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation (NHG), at around 2.6 Ma. This cooling event is marked by a triplet of glacial stages (i.e., MIS 100, 98 and 96) that are found just above the Piacenzian-Gelasian boundary.

In the wake of the emerging interest towards the MSN section, we are currently committed to reconstructing a high-resolution multi-proxy record (foraminiferal δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C, Alkenones-derived SSTs, C_37total and Alcoholic index) in the lower part of the “Mandorlo” section at MSN (Capraro et al., 2022; Zanola et al., 2024). Results achieved so far provide new insights on the paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic evolution of the central Mediterranean at the sub-orbital scale at the beginning of the NHG.