Raised Marine Terraces

A core goal of this trip was to collect sands from sedimentary deposits that formed in shallow marine and beach environments, and subsequently have been uplifted to varying elevations above sea level. The trip has been a huge success in this regard! Below is a photo showing the highest marine terrace at about 1,000 meters elevation.

Sergio is a master drone pilot, and his photos are super helpful for studying these surfaces.

Below is a screenshot from a video he took of me collecting sand from one of these high marine terrace deposits.

Photos below show what we found on the side of this high cliff: uncemented marine beach sand!

Sergio is a great chef and he cooked us a delicious Sicilian dish of rigatoni pasta with red tomato basil eggplant sauce which we devoured.  Marco Meschis arrived in time to make the bruschetta and join us for this feast.

The next day Sergio, Marco and I got back to work scouting more terraces at lower elevations.

Below is a nice shot of stratified gravel and sand that formed in an uncertain environment.  I think it looks like a beach gravel but we did not see any shells so it could be a river gravel (but I doubt it).

The next day Marco and I found a beautiful shelly marine sand at 160 m elevation that previous workers have determined is about 125,000 years old.  This indicates a time-averaged uplift rate of 1.3 m per thousand years (= mm/yr), which is typical for this tectonically active setting.

We celebrated with dinner at a local restaurant. Now we will await the results of age dating to determine the next steps in our new collaborative study.

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