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.

A recently published scenario viewing the Messinian salinity crisis as two evaporitic steps rather than one has led to a search for new indices of the crisis in the Eastern Paratethys. Fluvial processes characterized the southwestern Dacic Basin (Southern Romania, i.e. the Carpathian foredeep) whereas brackish sediments were continuously deposited in its northern part.This is consistent with previously evidenced responses of the Black Sea to the Messinian salinity crisis. High sea-level exchanges between the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Paratethys are considered to have occurred just before and just after desiccation of the Mediterranean.This accounts for two successive Mediterranean nannoplankton-dinocyst in£uxes into the Eastern Paratethys that, respectively, belong to zones NN 11 and NN 12. Meanwhile, two separate events that gave rise to Lago Mare facies (with Paratethyan Congeria, ostracods and/or dino£agellate cysts) arose in the Mediterranean Basin in response to these high sea-level exchanges and located 5.52 and 5.33 Ma (isotopic stagesTG 11and TG 5, respectively), i.e. just before and just after the almost complete desiccation of the Mediterranean). These Lago Mare facies formed independently of lakes with ostracods of the Cyprideis group that developed in the central basins during the ¢nal stages of desiccation.The gateway faciliting these water exchanges is not completely identi¢ed. A proto -Bosphorus strait seems unlikely. A plausible alternative route extends from the northern part of theThessaloniki region up to the Dacic Basin and through Macedonia and the So¢a Basin.The expression 'Lago Mare' is chronostratigraphically ambiguous and should be discontinued for this purpose, although it might remain useful as a palaeoenvironmental term.Correspondence: J.-P. Suc, Laboratoire Pale¤ oEnvironnements et Pale¤ obioSphe' re (UMR 5125 CNRS), Universite¤ Claude Bernard-Lyon 1, 27-43 boulevard du 11 Novembre,

In the Aegion to Kalavrita region of the Gulf of Corinth, Greece, Plio-Pleistocene syn-rift stratigraphy comprises a fluvial-dominated lower group and an upper group dominated by Gilbert-type deltas separated by an erosive unconformity. The lower group records substantial accumulation (1.3 km) of fluvial sediment across a broad area of fault-controlled grabens and half grabens, which was terminated by a marine transgression. The upper group records a great increase in accommodation space, the migration of the depocentre to the north and an increase in sediment supply. It is dominated by large gravel-rich systems that were sourced in the footwalls of active normal faults. The Vouraikos Delta is an exceptionally well-exposed Gilbert-type fan delta complex, which is > 800 m thick, with a surface area of 32 km 2 . It lies in the hangingwall of the Pirgaki-Mamoussia Fault and has been exhumed in the footwall of the Eastern Helike Fault. Preliminary palynological results from topset and pro-delta fine-grained facies and from lower group strata indicate that the Vouraikos Delta began forming some time before 1.1 Ma and was terminated soon after 0.7 Ma. These preliminary Early to Middle Pleistocene age estimates are coherent with published models of the uplift history of the Eastern Helike Fault. Sedimentation rates are thus estimated between 1.3 and 2 mm yr −1 . While the earliest delta infilled an incised palaeovalley, accommodation space was primarily tectonically controlled, first by an extensional forced fold and later by a system of major normal faults (Pirgaki-Mamoussia Fault and its splays). Several families of syn-sedimentary and late normal faults cut the delta. A listric growth fault controlled a large rollover anticline in the lowest stratigraphic package. The delta prograded (to the north-northwest) into water that reached depths of 200-600 m. Topset limestones associated with coastal conglomerate facies indicate that the delta built into a water body that was wholly or periodically marine. Internally, the Vouraikos Delta comprises five stratigraphic packages each characterized by a distinctive organization of topsets, foresets, bottomsets and pro-delta facies and bounded by major stratigraphic surfaces. These packages are tentatively correlated with regressive glacio-eustatic interglacial periods. The trajectory of the offlap break in the centre of the Vouraikos reflects early progradationdominated behaviour followed by increasingly aggradational behaviour.