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bulk element composition and grain-size distribution to characterize the temporal evolution of the terrigenous input to this area throughout the last 50 ka. The high-resolution elementary profiles show high frequency oscillations, particularly of Si, Ti and K contents, associated with terrigenous input variability. These fluctuations mark significant changes in the source areas and/or in the nature of transport and sedimentation processes most likely related to abrupt changes in oceanographic and atmospheric conditions. The Menorca core records were compared with the geochemical results of a previously studied core from the Alboran Sea, from where it became obvious a similar behaviour in some of the terrigeneous elements at both core locations. The obtained records vary with a clear Dansgaard-Oeschger periodicity reaching higher values during the North Atlantic's Heinrich Events. These results evidence the presence of a millennial-scale synchronous pattern in the Western Mediterranean in terms of deposition of terrigenous material. In addition, grain-size analyses of Menorca core reveal rhythmic episodes of coarser particle inputs during the Holocene likely related to shifts in the intensity of deep-water currents.

Sea-floor bathymetric and backscatter data is used to image one of the youngest major landslides in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea. The landslide, a 26 km3 debris flow, covers 2,000 km2 of the Ebro continental slope and base-of-slope offshore Spain. A pattern of low backscatter large sediment blocks which moved downlope while keeping their internal coherence separated by topographically low high backscatter lineations of coarse sediment is shown in the sea-floor images. The results of the interpretation of these features provide fundamental insights on the behaviour of submarine debris flows from which hydrocarbon search could greatly benefit.

Results from sedimentological and mass-physical properties of seven piston cores recovered on the youngest major landslide in the Ebro continental slope and base-of-slope, Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, are presented.