The subject of our research is the Mediterranean salt-tectonic supergiant. Its geological history includes two peaks of salt accumulation of different ages: the most famous late Miocene Messinian and the preceding Triassic. Both peaks are associated with the main tectonic events in the history of the Neo-Tethys and its margins. The Triassic peak is associated with the riftogenic foundation and disclosure of the Neo-Tethys, and the Messinian peak is associated with the final phases of its collisional closure. It was made an attempt to substantiate the presence in the substrate and in the margins of the Messinian salt accumulation basins of more ancient buried salt strata, the processes of intensive crumpling of which during the collision of paleocontinents and paleomicrocontinents were accompanied by the removal of salts from their original locations and could contribute to the accumulation of salts at the Messinian level. The work is based on the results of long-term complex lithological and tectonic studies performed by the author, of salt-bearing sedimentary basins in Russia and the World and on a broad generalization of the data on the Mediterranean. The article summarizes and analyzes geological and tectonic material covering the modern distribution and relationship of the Miocene and Triassic salts in the Mediterranean, reveals the presence of spatial relationships between them, considers the main morpho-kinetic types of salt bodies and characterizes their features in different areas of the Mediterranean. For the Triassic salts, currently largely residual, a mode of their original distribution has been reconstructed, the most important feature of which was the maximum development of salts along riftogenic passive margins of paleo-continents and paleo-microcontinents. Possible changes in salt bodies during the tectonic and kinematic history of the region and the mode of their distribution by the beginning of the Messinian time are considered. It has been concluded that the basins of accumulation of Messinian salts were located mainly within the areas of pre-Messinian distribution of Triassic salts. The processes of collision of paleo-continents and paleo-microcontinents, which reached the greatest intensity at the end of the Miocene, led to a sharp increase in the intensity of the processes of compression, crumpling, and disruption of salt-bearing sedimentary complexes, widely developed along their passive paleo-margins, and was accompanied by large-scale tectono-kinematic removal of the Triassic brine-salt masses from these complexes. All this created material prerequisites for the participation of these masses in the allochthonous and neo-autochthonous accumulation of salts at the Messinian level and served as one of the probable causes of the Messinian salt crisis.
G. A. Belenitskaya (Wed,) studied this question.