PhD: Palaeoenvironmental change in the eastern Mediterranean over the last 20 million years

This project seeks to determine the palaeoenvironments of the eastern Mediterranean over a range of timescales from the closure of the eastern Mediterranean gateway, through the emergence of Cyprus as an island in the Neogene, to present. This will provide new information on the palaeoclimates that helped shape the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot, contributed to the unique island faunas of the Quaternary and the development of societies during the Holocene.

Cyprus provides a unique 20 million year sedimentary archive that presents the opportunity to reconstruct palaeoclimatic, tectonic and sea-level change. This includes investigation of whether the opening of eastern Mediterranean gateway contributed to the onset of the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum around 17 million years ago. Cyprus would have sat in the path of any oceanic current that may have flowed through an open gateway connecting the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean, and therefore provides a unique opportunity to test the hypothesis that changing ocean circulation patterns led to the globally warm interval, that is often considered analogous to a natural experiment for the potential impacts of future climate change on ocean circulation and marine life. This project also seeks evidence for the isolation of the Mediterranean from the surrounding oceans during the Messinian salinity crisis (5.96 – 5.33 million years ago), as well as palaeoclimate, relative sea level and coastal evolution over the more recent Quaternary period.

The project will involve fieldwork to Cyprus, as well as work on previously collected sediment cores. We anticipate the student to adopt a multi-proxy approach to reconstruct palaeoenvironmental change, including the use of pollen, diatoms and dinoflagellates. Full training will be given in laboratory techniques.