Europe

Europe

Academic Project: Pollen analysis of Cenozoic sediments with major targets such as vegetation and climate reconstructions, climatostratigraphy, cyclostratigraphy, and estimates of relief paleo-altitudes.

Extensive pollen records based on an effective botanical approach have resulted in detailed vegetation and climate reconstructions along time, illustrated by simulated paleo-vegetation maps and climate quantifications, respectively. The history of tropical elements in the region, including the mangrove, is particularly well-understood as that of the subtropical forests, including the Glyptostrobusswamps. The developments of open vegetation spaces in the South Mediterranean realm is deciuphered and the invasion of the Artemisiasteppes well-understood. The origin and expansion of the Mediterranean sclerophyllous populations are robustly identified. Such accurate pollen records allow long-distance climatostratigraphic relationships on the basis of global climate changes even if they are characterized by different vegetation types. Climatostratigraphic correlations are also established with the reference oxygen isotope curves. For some high-resolution pollen records, cyclostratigraphic correlations have been obtained with orbital cyclicities. At least, paleotemperature quantifications allow to estimate relief evolution along the whole Cenozoic for the most important European massifs.

Academic Project : Biostratigraphy and stratigraphy of the Mediterranean peripheral basins with a special focus on the impact of the Messinian Salinity Crisis, sea-level changes and relationships with the former Paratethys.

Most of the peripheral Mediterranean basins have been intensively explored and precisely dated just before the onset of the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) and at its end, using calcareous nannofossils and planktonic foraminifers. In several basins, a thick evaporitic series overlain by a strong subaerial erosional surface (i.e., the Messinian Erosional Surface) separate these two marine levels, dated at 5.60 and 5.46 Ma, respectively. Only the Messinian Erosional Surface (MES) and the second marine levels are present in the basins devoid of evaporitic deposits (possibly eroded?). These evaporites constitute the first (marginal) step of the MSC (5.97-5.60 Ma) while the MES corresponds on the margins to the second step (i.e. the peak) of the MSC marked by thick evaporites in the central Mediterranean basins (5.60-5.46 Ma). The two marine levels at 5.60 and 5.46 Ma are characterized by the occurrence of brackish dinoflagellate cysts originating from the former Eastern Paratethys (Dacic Basin  and Euxinic Basin). These marine layers correspond to high sea-levels allowing the Mediterranean and Paratethys to have been momentarily connected (important mutual biological exchanges using the surface currents): Paratethyan molluscs, ostracods and dinoflagellates enterred the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean foraminifers, calcareous nnannofossils and dinoflagellates enterred the Eastern Paratethys.