Late Quaternary transgressions and regressions in the Trieste Gulf (north-eastern Adriatic Sea)

The integration of high-resolution seismic profiles, core data and radiocarbon plus U-Th datings, allows to document the late Quaternary succession of the Trieste Gulf, which represents the easternmost part of the northern Adriatic Sea. This succession consists of an alternation of shallow-marine and continental deposits organized to compose four transgressive-regressive sequences down to ca. 90 m below present sea level. The sequences terminate landwards against a stepped surface bounding the Eocene Trieste Flysch and produced by alternating episodes of wave erosion during transgressions and subaerial exposure during stages of relative sea-level fall and lowstand. Two shallow-marine wedges, in addition to the Holocene one, have been recognized; they are associated with the Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 5.5 (Tyrrhenian) and probably at least one of the peaks of MIS 7. The recognized shallow-marine wedges typically prograde just seaward of a buried wave-cut platform lying in front of a receding paleo-coastal cliff. A previously unrecognized stratigraphic hiatus of ca. 25 ka duration, containing the whole Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) phase, was found at the top of palustrine deposits that accumulated on the MIS 5.5 marine sediments until ca. 40 cal ka B.P. and a post-LGM peat bed accumulated during the Younger Dryas stadial. The beginning of the Holocene was characterized by marked fluvial aggradation preceding the marine transgression at ca. 11-10 cal ka B.P. This new evidence is invaluable for better understanding late Quaternary sedimentary and erosional episodes that characterized the easternmost part of the norther Adriatic Sea, in the frame of the well-known glacio-eustatic sea-level changes.