Abstract
The identification of past connection routes between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, other than the traditional one through to the Bosphorus Strait, would be of considerable interest to the international scientific community. Nazik et al. (Geo-Mar Lett 31:75–86 (2011) doi:10.1007/s00367-010-0216-9) suggest the possibility of two alternative waterway connections via lakes Sapanca and İznik. Their Black Sea to Sea of Marmara multi-connection hypothesis, which is based on undated marine fossils collected in both lakes from surficial grab samples, conflicts with many earlier studies. In this contribution, the hypothesis and the underlying data are discussed in the light of previous tectonic, sedimentological and limnological findings showing that it is impossible to have had marine connections through lakes Sapanca and İznik during the last 11.5 ka. Global sea-level trends and tectonic uplift rates would accommodate a connection between the Sea of Marmara and Lake İznik in the middle Pleistocene. Uplift rates for the northern block of the North Anatolian Fault, when compared with the global sea-level curve, clearly indicate that there cannot have been a connection through the İzmit Gulf–Lake Sapanca–Sakarya Valley for at least the past 500 ka. Moreover, borehole sediments along the western shores of Lake Sapanca, which reach down to the bedrock, do not contain any marine fossils.
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Acknowledgements
The 2011 Lake İznik field study was done within the C.E.P. Foundation. General funding was by the German Research Foundation (DFG), grant number FR 1199/1-1, 2, the İTU Scientific Project Office BAP, grant number 11_04_277, and also by DAAD grant A/04/17884. We wish to thank two anonymous referees and also Dr. Richard Hiscott for their helpful comments on the manuscript, as well as the journal editors.
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Yaltırak, C., Ülgen, U.B., Zabcı, C. et al. Discussion: a critique of Possible waterways between the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea in the late Quaternary: evidence from ostracod and foraminifer assemblages in lakes İznik and Sapanca, Turkey, Geo-Marine Letters, 2011. Geo-Mar Lett 32, 267–274 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-011-0270-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-011-0270-y