SALTGIANT

The Mediterranean Salt Giant (MSG) was formed about 6 million years ago during the Messinian stage of the Miocene epoch when the restriction of water exchanges between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea turned the Mediterranean into a hudge saline basin. The MSG exceeds a thickness of 3 km in the deep Mediterranean basins and contains more than one million cubic kilometres of evaporite salts (mainly halite and gypsum). Extensive research has been carried out on the MSG since its discovery with deep-sea scientific drilling in 1970. SALTGIANT will train a new generation of 15 PhD students at the frontier between natural and social, fundamental and applied sciences with the aim to unravel what remains one of Earth Science’s most fascinating enigmas. The research objectives are organized into four research work packages.