At PetroStrat, our staff are encouraged to follow their research interests. Together with other co-authors our own Lea Rausch applied an integrated stratigraphic approach using ostracods to re-evaluate the faunal assemblages and paleoenvironments of the Seddülbahir and İntepe sections in Turkey.
Exclusive paper overview by co-author Lea Rausch
“Improving the age estimates of faunal elements in the enigmatic Alcıtepe Formation of the Dardanelles region in NW Turkey will lead to a better understanding on the presence or absence of Messinian-Zanclean deposits in the region.”
Lea Rausch (Micropalaeontologist, PetroStrat)
Summary – The myth of the Messinian Dardanelles: Late Miocene stratigraphy and palaeogeography of the ancient Aegean-Black Sea gateway
The Dardanelles region has formed a key gateway connecting the Paratethys and the Aegean/Mediterranean since the late Miocene. Paratethyan ostracod and mollusk assemblages are widespread in the area and have been observed as far south as the Denizli Basin in southwestern Turkey. The exact migration path and time of these particular species to southwestern Turkey however, remains unresolved. It is likely that they passed through the Aegean, potentially an ancient Dardanelles Strait, making the area fundamental for explaining the biogeographic evolution of the entire region.
The result in Krigsmann et al. (2020) show that the ostracod fauna from the Seddülbahir and İntepe sections unequivocally represents late Miocene (middle Tortonian) Paratethyan assemblages. Similar faunas are known from northeastern Bulgaria at the western coast of the Euxinian Basin and from northwestern Bulgaria (Dacian Basin), both basins being components of the Eastern Paratethys at that time (Bessarabian-Khersonian in Paratethys terminology). Most samples yielded a rich fresh to anomalohaline ostracod fauna leading to the conclusion that the Dardanelles region in the late Miocene was an embayment, ephemerally connected to the Eastern Paratethys.
Read the full paper on Science Direct
Wout Krijgsman, Marius Stoica, Thomas M. Hoyle, Elisabeth L. Jorissen, Sergei Lazarev, Lea Rausch, Diksha Bista, Mehmet Cihat Alçiçek, Ayhan Ilgar, Lars W. van den Hoek Ostende, Serdar Mayda, Isabella Raffi, Rachel Flecker, Oleg Mandic, Thomas A. Neubauer, Frank P. Wesselingh, The myth of the Messinian Dardanelles: Late Miocene stratigraphy and palaeogeography of the ancient Aegean-Black Sea gateway, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 560, (2020).
