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,
