1 MIS 5 e sea-level proxies in the eastern Mediterranean coastal region

Mediterranean ‘raised beaches’ were subject to Quaternary research since the early years of the 20th century. The uniqueness of a warm-loving molluscs fauna immigrating into the Mediterranean made the coastline a prime subject for studying Quaternary sea-level changes. Today, we have a detailed picture of this historically important coastline 10 characterised by tectonically dormant coastal zone alternating with zones that are subject to subsidence or uplift. As part of the Word Atlas of last interglacial shorelines (WALIS) database we compiled 21 MIS 5e proxies for the eastern Mediterranean area available at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4274178 (Israel; Sivan and Galili, 2020) and at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4283819 (Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia; Mauz, 2020). All these datapoints are sea-level indicators of variable quality situated between -1±4 m and 7±2 m resulting in a reconstructed MIS 5e palaeo-sea level situated between 15 -1±4 m and 13±10 m.


Introduction
The eastern Mediterranean area (Fig. 1) is a remain of the western Neotethys Ocean (Hafkenscheid and Spakman, 2006) which formed when the Indian Ocean gateway closed during the Miocene (Bialik et al., 2019). It contains the oldest oceanic crust on earth (Granot, 2016) which is actively subducting beneath the Aegean Sea (Crete, Peleponnese peninsula) and the 20 Ionian Sea (Calabria). The oceanic crust is part of the northeast moving African plate and the continental part of this plate is a passive continental margin. The coasts of the eastern Mediterranean are therefore situated on earth's crustal segments that are, on late Quaternary time scales, actively deformed, slowly deformed or dormant. Because the eastern Mediterranean has a long history of geoscientific work the actively deformed areas, such as the Gulf of Corinth, Crete and Cyprus are very well studied (e.g., McPhee and Hinsbergen, 2019;McNeill et al., 2018). These studies used, amongst other features, the relatively 25 well-preserved last interglacial (LIG) marine terraces. On the other side, the coast of the African passive continental margin received attention through Quaternary scientist who aimed, in the first instance at least (e.g., Gignoux 2013), to carry forward the biostratigraphy of the late Tertiary owing to the fauna-rich coastal deposits. Today, our understanding of the geodynamics (e.g., Nocquet, 2012)  Hindsbergen, 2019), the African passive continental margin (Nocquet, 2012), the zone affected by the Nile discharge (Emery 50 and Neev, 1960;Davis et al., 2012) and the morphological lowlands which are graben or rift basins with minor or absent tectonic activity during the late Quaternary. The Gebco data were obtained from GEBCO Compilation Group (2020) GEBCO 2020 Grid (doi:10.5285/a29c5465-b138-234d-e053-6c86abc040b9). SRTM data were obtained from http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org .

1.1.1
Active tectonic zone 55 Ionian Sea (Peloponnese peninsula, Greece) -this area is situated adjacent to the Hellenic trench and the Kephalonia fault both being part of the Hellenic subduction zone. Athanassis and Foutoulis (2013) identify MIS 5 shell-rich littoral deposits on a "platform" with a palaeo-shoreline situated at ca 40 -60 m altitude.
Ionian Sea (Corinth Gulf) -the gulf is a marginal sea connected to the Ionian Sea through two 50-60 m deep sills. It is affected by high to very high extension rates and associated uplift of coastal zones. A suite of marine terraces occurs on the 60 southeast coast of the Gulf (Vokha plain) which attracted many researchers owing to the large number of terrace levels (16 terraces; de Gelder et al., 2019), their well-preserved topographic expression and coastal sediment cover. The early studies focused on the relationship between sea-level highstands and terrace elevation (e.g., Keraudren and Sorel, 1987;Collier, 1990) followed by studies looking at the terraces, their sediment cover and associated ages and at structural implications with the seminal paper published by Armijo et al. (1996). The researchers' interest focused on the understanding of the  (Jenkins et al., 2020). The northern NAF strand creates deep tectonic depressions separated by structural 70 highs (Jenkins et al., 2020). High rates of NAF motion (~20 mm/a) progressively increasing westward (Bulkan et al., 2020) and associated earthquakes makes the area a prime subject of hazard studies. Studying Pleistocene marine terraces in this area aims therefore at determining uplift rates and, in addition, the hydrodynamic history between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. Yaltirak et al. (2002) studied the marine terraces along the Dardanelles coast and finds the LIG terrace at 38-22 m and at 9-0 m.

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Aegean Sea (Crete) -the Crete island is a subaerial forearc above the Hellenic subduction zone and thus, its shorelinerelated features are used to study the geodynamics of the eastern Mediterranean (e.g., Robertson et al., 2019). The studies focus on the south coast of the island where the LIG marine terrace is situated at 160-180 m altitude (Robertson et al., 2019) and at 50-100 m altitude (Gallen et al., 2014). For the most recent study of the terraces see Ott et al. (2019)  Levant Sea (Israel) -The central ("Carmel") coast is part of the passive continental margin of the African plate which moves southward along the Dead Sea transform fault (e.g., Weinberger et al., 2009). It receives its sediments exclusively through the Nile littoral cell (e.g., Davis et al., 2012) which is a persistent easterly-driven longshore current created by the interplay of winds and Coriolis force. Coastal deposits bearing Strombus bubonius were first described by Issar and Kafri, (1972) and subsequently defined as "Yasaf" member by Sivan et al. (1999). LIG deposits occur on the Galilee coast at elevations 1-2 m  Ionian Sea (Libya) -The coast from west of Alexandria (Egypt) to east of Tripoli (Libya) is under-studied and Quaternary deposits are only known from Explanatory Booklet provided in association to geological maps. Therein, Hinnawy and Cheshitev (1975) describe the "Gargaresh Formation" of "Tyrrhennian" age which forms an elongated ridge parallel to the modern shoreline (Fig. 4).
Ionian Sea (Tunisia) -the coast is situated on the largest eastern Mediterranean shelf. Around Djerba island the LIG coastal environment is represented by a barrier stretching from Sabratah to the southern Gulf of Gabès ( Fig. 4; Jedoui et al., 2003).
A barrier also existed north of the Gabès gulf in the Gulf of Hammamet and along the south coast of Cap Bon. Coastal deposits were first systematically described by Paskoff and Sanaville (1983). Hearty (1986)   Large coastal zones are deprived of indicators, e.g. the frequently cited zone at Monastir (Tunisia; e.g., Kopp et al., 2009).
On rocky, sediment-starved coasts erosional indicators such as abrasion platforms and tidal notches prevail while on soft sediment coasts with sufficient sediment supply beach ridges, sandy beaches, barriers and spits prevail. Sediment-starved coasts show abiotic carbonate crusts and lithophaga borings or biotic, reef-like constructions generated by red algae (corallinacea), algal serpulids, coral (Cladocora caespitosa) or vermetids. Some of the indicators can provide small vertical 150 uncertainties, for instance, if the living range of a particular fauna is small or if the sediment facies is well constrained in terms of water depth. For list of indicators see Table 1. 165 radiometric dating of the terrace surface and deposits. Thus, as long as additional techniques (e.g., GPR) are not employed, the marine terrace is considered marine-limiting or it is a sea-level indicator with an uncertainty deduced from the DEM resolution (e.g., 5 m).

Coastal Notch
Notches, typically carved in limestone cliffs, are a sea-level indicator formed by erosion. On the basis of form and shape 170 they are differentiated in wave-cut notch and bio-erosional notch, both generated in the inter-to supratidal zone (Antonioli et al., 2015). Notches are regarded as accurate vertical markers of past sea level. When occurring on a micro-tidal coast, they are very precise because the vertical uncertainty is the tidal amplitude which is typically 15 -30 cm in the eastern Mediterranean with the exception of the Gulf of Gabès (Tunisia) where the amplitude is around 70 cm. To use the notch as a sea-level indicator an unequivocally correlated and datable coastal deposit has to be available on site and this is rarely the 175 case.

Sediment Facies
Eastern Mediterranean coastal sediments are represented by beach or fan-delta conglomerate, siliciclastic, carbonate and oolitic sand, clay and silt. These sediments may constitute beach ridges, barriers, veneers on terraces, beaches, lagoons or

Lithophagha Cavity
The bivalve Lithophaga lithophaga belongs to the Mytilidae genera. Species of this genera are characterised by colonising hard substrates. They secret a calcium-binding substrate and thereby generate cavities that they inhabit (Coletti et al. 2020).
L. lithophaga live between the intertidal and 25 m water depth with highest abundance within 10 m water depth as reported

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for the Gulf of Naples (Coletti et al., 2020). The cavities are often observed on rock faces representing former cliffs and within the curvature of a notch suggesting that the bivalve colonises the cliff around mean sea level (Antonioli et al., 2015) with a relatively large uncertainty (>5m), however, owing to the large living range of the bivalve (Lambeck et al., 2004).

Cladocora Caespitosa Reef
Cladocora caespitosa is a scleractinian polyp characterised by a corallite skeleton. It is a colonial coral species which forms 195 banks of variable size on rocky and, occasionally, on sandy seabeds. The temperate coral is endemic to the Mediterranean where it shows relatively slow skeletal growth rates ranging from 1.3 mm yr −1 (Peirano et al., 1999)  predominantly for the purpose of U-series dating the associated LIG deposits with limited success, however, likely caused by the strong seawater temperature dependence (Trotter et al., 2011) and associated crystal instability of carbonate minerals compared to their tropical counterparts.

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The vermetid reef is a biogenic dome-or reef-like structure dominated by sessile marine gastropods living in shallow water of warm-temperate seas (Vescogni et al., 2008). Two species are known: Petaloconchus dominating the vermetids reefs in the Neogene until the Pleistocene, replaced by Dendropoma in the Holocene (Laborel, 1986). Vermetid reefs grow in associations with coralline algae, bryozoans, serpulids and benthic foraminifera creating together a bioclastic calcarenite (Bosellini et al., 2001). While the living range of Dendropoma is well-constrained from modern analogues to be the intertidal to upper subtidal zone (Laborel and Laborel-Deguen, 1994), the living range of Petaloconchus was reconstructed through facies analysis. These suggest beach down to the upper part of the slope (0-50 m; Vescogni et al., 2008) and, thus, Petaloconchus is considered marine-limiting.

Elevation measurements
Many of the studies listed above focused on stratigraphy, lithology or dating of the relevant coastal feature and did not 215 emphasise elevation. Others, looking at the structural geology, reported elevation and associated measurement technique. Likewise, the sea-level datum was not reported to the detail desired for the WALIS database. In most cases "mean sea level" was used, also because the eastern Mediterranean tide is small and does not exceed 50 cm in most coastal zones. For the techniques used see Table 2. In total 21 indicators are listed in the two databases and displayed against their longitudinal position in Fig. 6. When taking the uncertainty into account, the minimum and maximum LIG sea level is at -5.1 m and 23 m, respectively. All facies-based 225 indicators are characterised by small indicative ranges, but some are associated with large uncertainties owing to poorly constrained elevation data. From the 21 indicators displayed in Fig. 6 we describe here the 12 most reliable ones with their WALIS ID. These are situated on coastal zones affected by the interplay of eustacy and associated regional GIA only and provide age constraints and/or the Senegal fauna. Zones with minor or debated non-GIA contributions are also included.

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Coastal zones for which non-GIA processes during the late Quaternary are unambiguously evident are excluded (for zones 230 see Fig. 1). For the selected zones we assume coastal geometries, hence tidal prism, to be similar to today because the course of the LIG beach ridges and barriers suggest a LIG coastline running sub-parallel to the modern one. The mean tidal range today is 0.5 m (Admiralty Tide tables) apart from the Gulf of Gabès (1.5 m; Gzam et al., 2016).

African passive continental margin zone
El-Max-Abu Sir (ID 1362; Fig. 3) -The LIG shoreline is represented by the second beach ridge behind the modern coastline.
Cross-bedded bioclastic and oolitic grainstone of foreshore depositional environment (Elshazly et al., 2019) constitute the basal part of the ridge. The elevation should be < 5 m but is poorly defined. This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an 255 indicative range of 1-3 m water depth. The palaeo-sea level is at 0.5±4.6 m at 121±6 ka (El-Asmar, 1994). SRTM data were obtained from http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org .

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Ras Karboub (ID 1363; Fig. 4) -This site is part of the Jeffara barrier stretching almost parallel to the modern coastline from Sabratah (Libya) to Djerba island (Tunisia). The barrier shows siliciclastic sand of shoreface to foreshore gradually passing into oolitic grainstone of foreshore environment Mauz et al., 2009). The elevation should be 5-10 m but is poorly defined. This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range of +1m to -3 m. The palaeo-sea level is 265 at 7±10 m at 114±16 ka (Mauz et al., 2012). defined. This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range of +1m to -3 m. The palaeo-sea level is at 10±3 m at 121±10 ka (Mauz et al., 2009).
Hergla (ID 926; Fig. 5) -the around 2 m thick cemented bioclastic quartz sand shows planar laminae; the depositional environment is foreshore (Mauz et al., 2018). The elevation of the corresponding shoreline should be at 3-2 m deduced from the altitude of the coeval lagoonal deposit (Mauz et al., 2018). This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative 280 range of 1-3 m water depth. The palaeo-sea level is at 4.2±1.8 m at 120±5 ka.  environment is the swash zone of the beach (Sivan et al., 2016). The deposit is situated at 1.3 -2.4 m (Sivan et al., 2016).
This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range that includes storm wave swash height and breaking depth.

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The palaeo-sea level is at 1.8±1.0 m (average of n=3 indicators and standard deviation) during MIS 5e. (ID 1365; Fig. 4) -The LIG deposit is part of a coastline-parallel beach ridge. The lower part of the ridge is characterised by planar laminated beds of bioclastic sand bearing Strombus bubonius fossil remains (Gzam et al., 2016). The deposit is situated at 3 m (Gzam et al., 2016). This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range of +3 m to 0 m including 1.5 m mean tidal range. The palaeo-sea level is at 1.5±3.4 m during MIS 5e.  Jedoui, 2009;Mauz et al., 2012). The elevation should be 5-10 m but is poorly defined. This is a facies-based sea-level 300 indicator with an indicative range of +1 m to -3 m. The palaeo-sea level is at 13±10 m during MIS 5e.

Gulf of Gabès
Rass Zebib (ID 1368; Fig. 5) -the indicator is part of a cliff section the lower part of which is characterised by planar laminated beds of bio-and siliciclastic sand of shoreface to foreshore environment (Mauz et al., 2009). The elevation should be around 5 m but is poorly defined. This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range of -3 m to -8 m. The palaeo-sea level is at 11±6 m at 131±7 ka (Mauz et al., 2009).

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Ras el Korane (ID 1367; Fig. 5) -the indicator is part of a cliff section the middle part of which is characterised by lowangle cross bedded bioclastic calcarenites (Wided et al., 2019). The depositional environment is foreshore. The elevation should be 5-6 m but is poorly defined. This is a facies-based sea-level indicator with an indicative range of -1 m to -5 m. The palaeo-sea level is at 8±5 m during MIS 5e as deduced from facies correlation (Wided et al., 2019). can depart by up to 4 m from the eustatic value owing to local dynamic topography (e.g., Austermann et al., 2017). On the other hand, the LIG eustatic level is reconstructed probabilistically with a 4 m uncertainty (Kopp et al., 2013). Transferring these findings to the eastern Mediterranean, we can say that on tectonically dormant coasts the LIG sea level must have been situated at 5 ± 8 m. In fact, most of our datapoints depicted in Fig. 6 fall in this range of -3 m to 13 m.

Last Interglacial sea-level fluctuations
Sea-level fluctuation within LIG is reported from two sites: one site is Rosh Hanikra (ID 928) where the sea level fell from 3.3 m to 0.8 m and rose again to 6.5 m (Sivan et al., 2016). The other site is Hergla (ID 926) where the sea level should have risen first to 3 m, then dropped to near or below MSL and rose again to 4 m (Hearty et al. 2007). For this latter site, however, Mauz et al (2018) showed that the upper marine deposit at 4 m is younger than LIG.

6 Future research directions
With regard to LIG sea-level research the most interesting sites are situated on the African passive continental margin where tectonic movements are minimal and sediment supply is sufficient to generate a datable sea-level indicator with a small vertical uncertainty. Coastal zones that merit further attention are (1) the Carmel coast (Israel), where the LIG highstand formed a sediment wedge in onlap architecture (Fig. 2), and (2) the north Africa coast where LIG sediments formed a large 335 barrier preserved in patches (Figs 4 and 5). In addition, the datapoints depicted in Fig. 6 that do not fall in the predicted range of 5±8 m LIG sea-level elevation deserve further analysis.

Data availability
The two databases are available open access and are kept updated as necessary at the following links: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4274178 (Sivan and Galili, 2020) and http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4283819 (Mauz, 2020). The files at these links were exported from the WALIS database interface on 15 November 2020 and on 21 November 2020, respectively. Description of each data field in the database is contained at this link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3961543 (Rovere et al., 2020), that is readily accessible and searchable here: https://walishelp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. More information on the World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines can be found here: https://warmcoasts.eu/world-atlas.html. Users of our database are encouraged to cite the original sources in addition to our database and this article.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements
We thank Lotem Robins (Haifa) for uploading the Israel data to the WALIS database, Sara Stuecker (Salzburg) for generating the DEMs used for the map-based figures and Noureddine Elmejdoub (Gabès) for compiling the Tunisia data. The data described in this paper were compiled in WALIS, a sea-level database interface developed by the ERC Starting Grant