Seismic characterization and depositional significance of the Nahr Menashe deposits: Implications for the terminal phases of the Messinian salinity crisis in the north‐east Levant Basin, offshore Lebanon
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Over the last decade, there has been a resurgence of interest in the climatic and tectonic mechanisms that drove the Messinian salinity crisis (MSC) and the associated deposition of thick evaporites. The MSC represents an unprecedented palaeoceanographic change that led to a very short (ca. 640 kyr) ecological and environmental crisis. However, across the Levantine offshore basin, the sedimentological nature of the top evaporitic units and the mechanisms that controlled the transition from a hypersaline evaporitic unit to brackish deposits (final MSC stage 3) are still disputed. Here, we re‐evaluate the deposits associated with the terminal phase of the MSC, named in offshore Lebanon as the Nahr Menashe Unit (NMU). We describe the NMU seismic facies, characterize and map its internal seismic stratigraphy and provide a new interpretation of its depositional environment, which persisted during the late Messinian and then evolved through a regional reflooding event. The base of the NMU overlies semicircular depressions, randomly distributed linear marks and surface collapse features, which are indicative of a period of intense evaporite dissolution. The NMU seismic facies observed from the slope to the deep part of the basin support the interpretation of a layered salt‐evaporite‐sand depositional system subject to complex reworking, dissolution, deposition and final erosion. A drainage network of valleys and complex tributary channels incising into the top NMU shows marked erosional characteristics, which indicate a dominant southwards sediment transfer following deposition of the NMU. The drainage network was subsequently infilled by layered sediments interpreted here to represent the post‐MSC marine sediments. Our analysis adds important details regarding previous interpretations of the NMU as fluvial in origin. Specifically, the presence of subcircular, linear dissolution features coupled with mound‐like features indicates that the NMU is composed dominantly of evaporites that were subject to dissolution prior to erosion associated with the drainage network. The NMU is interpreted to represent the deposition/redeposition of a mixed evaporite‐siliciclastic succession in a shallow marine or lacustrine environment during the tilting of the offshore Lebanese basin.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".