Page 12 - 36 Elevation of the last interglacial highstand in Sicily

ARTICLE IN PRESS

14 F. Antonioli et al. / Quaternary International 145– 146 (2006) 3–18

Table 3
Comparison between MIS 5.5 and late Holocene uplift rates in Sicily

Sites Late Holocene Holocene MIS 5.5 MIS 5.5 uplift MIS 5.5 Acceleration
uplift (mm/ka) reference elevation (mm/ka) Reference MIS 5.5/late
Holocene

St. Vito Lo Capo E0 1 8–14 8–56 7 —
Milazzo (southern) 1.700 2 90 664 8 154

Ganzirri 1.400 3 110 710 9 97

St. Alessio 2.400 4 140 1.070 This paper 123

Taormina 1.900 5 115 870 This paper 118

Simeto Plain 560 6 ——— —

ÀÁ
The acceleration has been computed according to: A ¼ ðO À TÞ=T Â 100; where O is the Holocene uplift and T is the MIS 5.5 uplift.

References: (1) Antonioli et al. (1999b); (2) Gringeri et al. (2004); (3) Antonioli et al. (2004b); (4) Stewart et al. (1997); (5) Antonioli et al. (2003); (6)
Monaco et al. (2004); (6) Monaco et al. (2004); (7) Antonioli et al. (2002); (8) Hearty (1986) and Catalano and Cinque (1995); (9) Miyauchi et al.

(1994).

Fig. 8. Location of occurrences of Strombus bubonius and different dating methods provided for the Sicily coastline.

For Contrada Fusco (site 20 of Fig. 1 and Table 1) about 80 ka (stage 5.1), the subsequent marine high-
Bianca et al. (1999) wrote: ‘‘Geochronological data of stand, for the Akradina terrace’’. Notwithstanding the
mammals’ teeth collected from continental deposits above interpretation by Bianca et al. (1999), for the
cropping out along the northern border of the Floridia following reasons, we propose to use only the data from
basin are good constraints for the age of the Akradina the nearby Augusta site. Firstly, the continental layers
terrace. The Akradina biocalcarenites lie above con- containing mammal fossils at Contrada Fusco occur
tinental deposits containing remnants of Hippopotamus between marine sediments dated as late Sicilian (890 ka)
pentlandi and Elephas mnaidrensis, whose teeth have and fossiliferous marine sands referred to the middle
been dated with ESR (electron spin resonance) geochro- Pleistocene (Carbone et al., 1982) or Tyrrhenian (Di
nological techniques (Rhodes, 1996). The ages of the Grande and Neri, 1988). Secondly, Rhodes (1996, Table
youngest samples collected at this level produce dates 2, p. 43), on the basis of EU ages (between 56.173.4 and
with mean values ranging from 74.9722.2 to 125.079 ka with a mean of 88.2719.5 ka and LU1
84.5724.7 ka, strongly suggesting that the continental
deposits were developed during the sea-level lowstand 1Two models of uranium uptake are generally considered in order to
corresponding to MIS stage 5.2. This implies an age of calculate an ESR age. In the early uptake (EU) model, it is assumed