The Messinian salinity legacy: 50 years later

The so-called Messinian salinity crisis, which dramatically affected the Mediterranean Sea at the end of Miocene, and resulted in the accumulation of important quantities of both layered and massive salt deposits within the basin, also generated a thick pile of research papers, as well as endless debates within the scientific community. We believe that the body of evidence available from geological, hydrological, and geochemical data collected during the last 50 years provides a basis to identify a relatively coherent scenario to explain this extraordinary event, which led to the Mediterranean Sea being partly desiccated and which has strongly impacted its post Miocene evolution. We also stress how the late, or the limited understanding of several fundamental parameters, such as evidence of deep outflows of salty waters, or of realistic paleogeographic reconstructions of the Messinian basins or of recognition of their frequent syn-tectonic origin, has contributed to delay a general agreement by the scientific community of a coherent global model.