Sediment analyses of sediment cores from the cold-water coral mound province off Melilla, southern Alboran Sea

Cold-water corals (CWCs) are widely distributed in the entire Alboran Sea (western Mediterranean Sea), but only along the Moroccan margin they have formed numerous coral mounds, which are constrained to the West and the East Melilla CWC mound provinces (WMCP and EMCP). While information already exists about the most recent development of the coral mounds in the EMCP, the temporal evolution of the mounds in the WMCP was unknown up to the present. In this study, we present for the first time CWC ages obtained from four sediment cores collected from different mounds of the WMCP, which allowed to decipher their development since the last deglaciation. Our results revealed two pronounced periods of coral mound formation. The average mound aggradation rates were of 75-176 cm kyr-1 during the Bølling-Allerød interstadial and the Early Holocene, only temporarily interrupted during the Younger Dryas, when aggradation rates decreased to