History of climate and environment deduced from sediments of the Ptolemais Basin, Northwest Greece

Managed by the University of Cologne (Prof. Dr. Werner Ricken und PD Dr. Michael Weber) Late Neogene (Upper Miocene to Lower Pliocene) lacustrine sediments from the Ptolemais Basin (Northwest Greece) are under investigation concerning their palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimate change. The sediments show striking rhythmic bedding of carbonates and lignite, reflecting orbital-controlled humidity and temperature changes. Scientific questions to be addressed include the extent and potential link to the Messinian salinity crisis in the Mediterranean Sea, the link of lignite formation to globally-elevated temperatures in low latitudes during the Lower Pliocene, and the impact of the massive northern hemisphere glaciation during the Upper Pliocene (Weber).

To answer the scientific questions the systematic acquisition of multi-proxy records (photospectrometry, magnetic susceptibility and natural gamma) that span the Upper Miocene to Quaternary will be carried out. Stratigraphy will be based, amongst other things, on our palaeomagnetic measurements (magnetostratigraphy), which will give the framework for orbital tuning of the high-resolution proxy sets. The use of uni- and bivariate rockmagnetic measurements will help to obtain information about the carriers of the rock magnetic signal. In preparation for a proposal for the German Science Foundation (Ro 2170/5-1, in review), sediments from different profiles from the Ptolemais Basin have been investigated leading to three master theses and one doctoral thesis.