(Table 2) Radiocarbon dating on cold-water corals collected in the Mediterranean Sea

This study presents newly obtained coral ages of the cold-water corals Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata collected in the Alboran Sea and the Strait of Sicily (Urania Bank). These data were combined with all available Mediterranean Lophelia and Madrepora ages compiled from literature to conduct a basin-wide assessment of the spatial and temporal occurrence of these prominent framework-forming scleractinian species in the Mediterranean realm and to unravel the palaeo-environmental conditions that controlled their proliferation or decline. For the first time special focus was placed on a closer examination of potential differences occurring between the eastern and western Mediterranean sub-basins. Our results clearly demonstrate that cold-water corals occurred sparsely in the entire Mediterranean during the last glacial before becoming abundant during the Bølling-Allerød warm interval, pointing to a basin-wide, almost concurrent onset in (re-)colonisation after ~13.5 ka. […]

本研究呈现了在阿尔班海和西西里海峡（乌拉尼亚礁）收集到的冷水珊瑚 Lophelia pertusa 和 Madrepora oculata 的新近获得的珊瑚年代数据。这些数据与文献中编纂的所有地中海 Lophelia 和 Madrepora 年代数据相结合，以对地中海范围内这些显著的框架形成珊瑚类群的空间和时间分布进行区域评估，并揭示控制其繁盛或衰退的古老环境条件。首次特别关注对东地中海和西地中海次级盆地之间潜在差异的深入考察。我们的研究结果明确表明，在最后冰期期间，冷水珊瑚在整个地中海分布稀疏，而在博林-奥尔德温暖期期间变得丰富，这指向了在约13.5千年前后的区域范围内、几乎同时的（再）殖民化起始。