The Messinian Salinity Crisis is well known to have resulted from a significant drop of the Mediterranean sea level. Considering both onshore and offshore observations, the subsequent reflooding is generally thought to have been very sudden. We present here offshore seismic evidence from the Gulf of Lions and re‐visited onshore data from Italy and Turkey that lead to a new concept of a two‐step reflooding of the Mediterranean Basin after the Messinian Salinity Crisis. The refilling was first moderate and relatively slow accompanied by transgressive ravinement, and later on very rapid, preserving the subaerial Messinian Erosional Surface. The amplitude of these two successive rises of sea level has been estimated at ≤500 m for the first rise and 600–900 m for the second rise. Evaporites from the central Mediterranean basins appear to have been deposited principally at the beginning of the first step of reflooding. After the second step, which preceeded the Zanclean Global Stratotype Section and Point, successive connections with the Paratethyan Dacic Basin, then the Adriatic foredeep, and finally the Euxinian Basin occurred, as a consequence of the continued global rise in sea level. A complex morphology with sills and sub‐basins led to diachronous events such as the so‐called ‘Lago Mare’.This study helps to distinguish events that were synchronous over the entire Mediterranean realm, such as the two‐step reflooding, from those that were more local and diachronous. In addition, the shoreline that marks the transition between these two steps of reflooding in the Provence Basin provides a remarkable palaeogeographical marker for subsidence studies.

From Paleogene to Recent time, Macedonia was part of the South Balkan extensional region, the northern part of the Aegean extensional regime. Extension began in the middle to late Eocene in eastern Macedonia with the formation of a NNWtrending east-tilted half graben lying east of a forearc basin in central Macedonia. Following a short-lived period of localized shortening in late Oligocene to early Miocene time, a second period of Neogene extension began that continued to the present. Five cycles of Neogene extension are recognized, and associated sedimentation occurred in extensional basins of complex origins: (1) true graben, (2) tilted half graben, (3) pull-apart basins along strike-slip faults, (4) faulted silled basins filling topographic lows, and (5) complexly faulted basins of mixed fault origin. Neogene faulting and basin formation show a pattern that begins with both NNW-and EW-trending faults in mainly northern and eastern Macedonia progressing to younger times by dominantly NNW-to N-trending faults migrating into western Macedonia and E-W-and NW-trending faults dominant in eastern Macedonia. The origin of the Paleogene basins is interpreted to be related to trench rollback along the northern Hellenic trench and lateral spreading of thick hot crust within an arc. The short period of early Neogene shortening is related to the arrival of the small continental Kruja fragment at the subduction zone in Albania. The younger Neogene extension and westward migration of extensional faulting and basins is related to progressive rollback of the subducted slab in the northern Hellenic trench. The north-south extension in eastern Macedonia is related to the propagation of the North Anatolian fault in the northern Aegean Sea ca. 6 Ma and subsequent movement southward of south Balkan lithosphere north of the fault caused by the rapid SSW movement of the Aegean crust related to trench rollback along the southern Hellenic trench. The amount of southward extension within the Southern Balkan extensional region is much less than that in the Aegean south of the North Anatolian fault.

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Since the discovery of calcareous nannofossils, dinoflagellate cysts and planktonic foraminifers in deposits from the Dacic Basin, intensive research has been performed in order to evidence which gateway this microplankton used to connect Paratethys and the Mediterranean prior and after the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC). Such a gateway is also to be regarded at the origin of successive influxes of Paratethyan organisms (molluscs, ostracods, dinoflagellates) into the Mediterranean Basin ("Lago Mare" events). Observing that the İ stanbul area, usually proposed for this purpose, was inefficient, we examine the succession of marine well-dated pre-MSC and post-MSC deltaic deposits through the Balkans, from northern Greece to southern Romania, that constitutes a reliable candidate for such a marine corridor, the origin of which was caused by the regional tectonic extension. The reconstructed palaeogeography for high sea level episodes that encompassed the MSC clarifies the context of the so-called North Aegean Lake. This marine gateway probably evolved as a powerful river during the peak of the MSC, contributing to the deposition of clastics in the hydrocarbon Prinos Field. A tectonically controlled subsidence to the north and south of the Skopje region caused the closure of such a gateway.

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