Messinian
Final Miocene age (7.246–5.333 Ma), named from Messina-area strata, later associated with the Mediterranean salinity crisis.
Language and route: Italian city-name introduced in nineteenth-century scientific French. Messina, Sicily, Italy → historical scientific stage-name Messinian. This is a geographical/eponymic formation, not a Greek life-comparison compound.
Literal gloss: of Messina
The name and its history
Karl Mayer (Mayer-Eymar) · 1867 (1868 revisions also circulated)
- What does the word literally mean?
- of Messina
- What did the original author mean?
- Mayer separated a younger interval above his broad Tortonian, including Sicilian brackish and gypsum-bearing deposits that did not fit his earlier group.
- Why was the name needed?
- Miocene–Pliocene correlation and the relationship between marine, brackish and continental deposits were not captured by a single Tortonian stage.
- What evidence supported the original concept?
- Fossil molluscs in changing marine and marginal environments, with regional gypsum-bearing deposits, supported his nineteenth-century placement.
- How has geology changed the concept?
- The late-Miocene Mediterranean evaporite crisis became established much later, especially through deep-sea research in the 1970s; it was not what the name Messinian originally meant.
Further historical context
Mayer separated a younger interval above his broad Tortonian, including Sicilian brackish and gypsum-bearing deposits that did not fit his earlier group.
Miocene–Pliocene correlation and the relationship between marine, brackish and continental deposits were not captured by a single Tortonian stage.
Fossil molluscs in changing marine and marginal environments, with regional gypsum-bearing deposits, supported his nineteenth-century placement.
The late-Miocene Mediterranean evaporite crisis became established much later, especially through deep-sea research in the 1970s; it was not what the name Messinian originally meant.
Editorial qualification
A digitised 1867 volume is linked; the exact use of the term must still be checked against the correct page. Some references print 1868 after revised circulation.
Related names
Sources
- International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2026/06 — Primary authority for present unit names, hierarchy and boundary ages, not first coinages
- Mayer-Eymar (1867), Catalogue, premier cahier, ETH Zürich digital original — Digitised contemporaneous 1867 volume; edition available, exact naming sentence requires image/page verification
- Cita (2009), Messinian naming versus post-1960s salinity-crisis interpretation — Separates 19th-century stage definition from modern Mediterranean geological event
- ICS Neogene Subcommission, Tortonian stage historical review (PDF) — Mayer-Eymar’s original broad 1858 Tortonian concept and later truncation after Messinian introduction