Start of Messina Strait Fieldwork

Charlie and I were super excited to take the train south from Potenza on Tuesday and enter “The Zone”!  This place has a magical draw for both of us: for the ancient history (Greeks and Romans), the more ancient history (geology, active tectonics, sedimentology, rapid uplift and mountain building), culture, food, people, and the Messina Strait itself.  Two days ago we worked here in Calabria, not far from our apartment in Reggio Calabria.  Then yesterday we went to Sicily.  The photo below was taken from near the NE end of the Peloritani Mountains in Sicily, looking ~ENE through the narrow constriction of the active conjugate relay zone where extensional strain is transferred from NW-dipping normal faults in Calabria to SE-dipping normal faults in Sicily.  Sorry for TMI!

To get there we took a ferry across the narrow part of the strait from Villa San Giovani to the historic city of Messina, which was destroyed by a M7.1 earthquake in 1908. The fault structure responsible for this earthquake, the source of tsunamis that inundated coastal cities during the event, and the geometry of faults that drive active seismicity in the region are all the subject of active research and debate.  Here is the waterfront of Messina as seen from our ferry on our approach to the port, with the low young mountain range behind it.

We undertook this first round of fieldwork with our friend and colleague Domenico Chiarella, who is originally from Calabria and is now a professor at Royal Holloway University in London. Domenico is a great geologist and stratigrapher who has studied the sedimentology and evolution of the Messina Strait region for many years, and he knows the area very well. Below is a shot of Charlie and Domenico as we headed out yesterday:

This was out first trip to Sicily and we were not disappointed! The goal of our mission on this day was to find, describe, and collect a tuff interbedded in a claystone deposit called Argille di Spadafora which, based on microfossils and biostratigraphy, formed in a deep marine basin sometime between 500,000 and 1 million years ago. Since then this marine clay unit has been uplifted to elevations up to 500 meters above sea level in northeastern Sicily. The photo below shows our approach to the collecting site.  We did have permission from the land owner to access this site, and the cows also seemed to approve.

We found the tuff!  Below you can see Domenico moving in for a close look, and yes it’s a tuff!

Below is the obligatory close-up view.  This is an inversely graded tuff with horizontally stratified well sorted ash in the lower part that coarsens up into lapilli tuff with granule-size pumice fragments and out-sized pumice pieces up to 4 cm long.  We collected this tuff, and hope to find sanidine grains that can be dated with argon isotopes at a lab in Pisa.  There is a lot more to say about this, maybe in a future post.

The ferry back to Calabria at the end of the day was breath-taking. In the view below there are at least 4 prominent terrace levels that represent uplifted remnants of an ancient marine shelf.  Can you spot them?

Today we went back to work on the Calabrian side.  Our first stop was a photo op looking southwest toward the looming majestic active volcano at Mount Etna. More breath-taking moments.

Below is a shot of the boys, feeling good after collecting our second sample!  This one was a detrital sandstone sample, which means it is a mix of grains with a range of different compositions.  If we are lucky enough to find sanidine grains, they are likely to have a wide range of ages which makes dating the age of deposition more difficult but not impossible.

We finished up with some more field work, then Domenico dropped us off at our apartment and drove to the airport to take a plane back to London. We found a little pizzeria and had a slice of pizza and aranciata (fizzy orange juice), then took a stroll along the gorgeous waterfront of Reggio Calabria. Domenico told us that a famous 20th century Italian poet  declared this to be “the most beautiful kilometer in Italy” (even though, or maybe because, he was from northern Italy). I would have to agree.

Charlie and I now have a few days “off” to explore the city and maybe take a day trip to – who knows where – there are lots of options.  Then back to field work next week.  The adventure continues!