Formation of Late Quaternary paleoshorelines in Crete, Eastern Mediterranean

•Paleoshorelines in western Crete do not always increase in age with rising altitude.•Sea-level rise and tectonic uplift account for paleoshoreline formation in Crete.•Submerged archaeological data reinforce late Holocene sea-level rise.•Paleoshorelines survived passage through the wave-zone multiple times.•Paleoshorelines may be formed during high or low sea-level stands.

Paleoshorelines of Late Quaternary age in western Crete do not exclusively increase in age with rising altitude as is generally observed worldwide. At numerous sites, for example, Late-Holocene paleoshorelines decrease in age with increasing altitude while in other cases paleoshorelines at similar altitude vary in age by tens of thousands of years. We propose that the observed paleoshoreline altitude-age relationships can be accounted for by eustatic sea-level changes and tectonic rock uplift without requiring substantial errors on radiocarbon ages or tectonic subsidence, as has been previously proposed. To test this model we use a dataset consisting of altitude and age data for 71 individual paleoshorelines sampled from 21 sites distributed along the entire Cretan coastline. These data include radiocarbon ages of marine biota (40 new dates) within beachrock resting on paleoshorelines ranging up to 48 kyr BP in age and ≤20 m above present sea-level. We find that paleoshoreline formation reflects Late Holocene tectonic rock uplift in western Crete, preceded by eustatic sea-level rise and by >10 kyr BP rock uplift along the entire island. Our observations contravene existing models as they suggest that some paleoshorelines, and their associated lithified beachrock, survived passage through the wave-zone multiple times and formed throughout the sea-level cycle (i.e., preservation is not restricted to highstand deposits). These results may have application globally in regions where erosion-resistant carbonate beachrock mantles paleoshorelines.