Evidence for a "pluvial" period Between 8-7 KA on Apuan Alps (Central Italy): Implications for the sapropel paradigm In the Eastern Mediterranean

A stratigraphic and chronological study of the upper level of Renella Cave (Apuan Alps, Central Italy) reveals that two episodes of flowstone accumulation bracket a thick clastic layer deposited between ca. 8.2 and 7.1 ka. This layer, which represents a period of enhanced cave flooding, is substantially in phase with an interval of depleted oxygen isotopes values previously recorded in a stalagmite from nearby Corchia Cave, previously interpreted to have resulted from an increase in local precipitation. Combined evidence from Renella and Corchia Cave suggests that this wettest phase was shorter than the condition leading to the formation of Sapropel S1. A synchronicity between signal dominated by the advection of vapour masses from the Atlantic, as Corchia and Renella archives should record in their proxies, cannot straightforwardly correlated with events (at least in duration) dominated by the monsoon signal as could be sapropels in the Mediterranean.