The intricate shores of the Mediterranean Sea twist and turn for some 46,000 km, with three-quarters of their convoluted length confined to only four countries— Italy, Croatia, Greece, and Turkey. Just over half the coast is rocky, much of it limestone, with the remainder encompassing almost every type of littoral environment (exceptions being coral reefs and mangrove wetlands). Such littoral diversity has long made the seaboard of southern Europe, the Levant, and North Africa a fruitful natural laboratory for studying coastal geomorphology and sea-level change. The virtually enclosed sea ensures that wave processes are generally modest and the tidal range is limited (often less than half a metre), a combination that permits observational evidence of many modern shoreline features to be related precisely to mean sea level. Consequently, relative shifts in the position of now relict coastal features can be used to track the rhythms of relative sea-level change and shoreline evolution. Such rhythms have a bearing on several aspects beyond the physical geography of the Mediterranean basin: they inform archaeological reconstructions of the past settlement and exploitation of a coastal zone that has been an important focus of human activity since Palaeolithic times; they provide testing and fine-tuning for geophysical, geodynamic, and palaeoclimatic models for the region; and they set the backdrop to contemporary societal issues, such as future sea-level rise and coastline adjustments to mass tourism, which threaten the long-term sustainability of the Mediterranean littoral. In this chapter, we review these diverse facets of the Mediterranean coastal realm to provide a synthesis of how these shores have evolved into their present-day appearance. The Mediterranean occupies the convergence zone between two major tectonic plates, Africa and Europe, with a third, Arabia, pressing from the east. Caught within the collisional vice of these great plates are several minor plates and crustal blocks, most notably Anatolia and Apulia. The result is a complex network of plate tectonic structures that define the general configuration of the seaboard. In particular, two major subduction systems partition the Mediterranean basin into a patchwork of minor basins and subsidiary seas (Krijgsman 2002; Chapter 1).
Intercontinental correlation of organic carbon and carbonate stable isotope records: evidence of climate and sea‐level change during the Turonian (Cretaceous)
