The volume of evaporite deposits in the Mediterranean requires an on-going supply of sea water from the Atlantic. The location of connecting corridor at this time however remains elusive. One possibility is that the Guadalquivir Basin at the western end of the Betic Strait (Fig. 1) that linked the Atlantic and Mediterranean during the MSC. The Messinian sediments deposited here are largely preserved in the sub-surface, but recent, unpublished results based on tuning cyclic well log records in the region indicates that this region accumulated deep water sediments continuously right up until the Mio-Pliocene boundary.

This project will integrate information from field exposures on the basin margins and further east along the corridor, with the interpretation of seismic and well log data located in and around the Guadalquivir Basin provided by the oil company, Gas Natural. These datasets will be complemented by borehole samples which will be used for micropalaeontological, sedimentological and isotope analysis.

Fig. 1. Map of the pre-Gibraltar Atlantic-Mediterranean gateways 5-10 million years ago and the location of the sections to be used in Medgate

• Flecker, R., Krijgsman, W., Capella, W., de Castro Martíns, C., Dmitrieva, E., Mayser, J.P., Marzocchi, A., Modestu, S., Lozano, D.O., Simon, D., Tulbure, M., van den Berg, B., van der Schee, M., de Lange, G., Ellam, R., Govers, R., Gutjahr, M., Hilgen, F., Kouwenhoven, T., Lofi, J., Meijer, P., Sierro, F.J., Bachiri, N., Barhoun, N., Alami, A.C., Chacon, B., Flores, Jose A., Gregory, J., Howard, J., Lunt, D., Ochoa, M., Pancost, R., Vincent, S., Yousfi, M.Z. (2015). Evolution of the Late Miocene MediterraneanAtlantic gateways and their impact on regional and globalenvironmental change, Earth Science Reviews, 150, 365-392.  
• Van den Berg, B.C.J., Sierro, F.J., Hilgen, F.J., Flecker, R., Larrasoaña, J.C., Krijgsman, W., Flores, J.A., Mata M.P., Bellido Martín, E., Civis, J., González-Delgado, J.A. (2015). Astronomical tuning for the upper Messinian Spanish Atlantic margin. Disentangling basin evolution, climate cyclicity and MOW, Global and Planetary Change, 135, 89-103.