Salt tectonics at salt-bearing margins is often interpreted as the combination of gravity spreading and gravity
gliding, mainly driven by differential sedimentary loading and margin tilting, respectively. Nevertheless, in the
Western Mediterranean Sea, the classical salt-tectonic models are incoherent with its morpho-structural setting:
Messinian salt was deposited in a closed system formed several Ma before the deposition, horizontally
throughout the entire deep basin, above a homogenous multi-kilometer pre-Messinian thickness. The subsidence
is purely vertical in the deep basin, implying a regional constant initial salt thickness. The post-salt overburden is
homogenous and the distal salt deformation occurred before the mid-lower slope normal-fault activation.
Instead, the compilation of MCS and wide-angle seismic data highlighted a clear coincidence between crustal
segmentation and salt morphology domains. The salt structures change morphology at the boundary between
different crustal natures. Regional thermal anomalies and/or fluid escapes, associated with the exhumation
phase, or mantle-heat segmentation, could therefore play a role in adding a further component to the already
known salt-tectonics mechanisms. The compilation of crustal segmentation and salt morphologies in different
salt-bearing margins, such as the Santos, Angolan, Gulf of Mexico and Morocco-Nova Scotia margins, seems to
depict the same coincidence. In view of the evidences observed in the Western Mediterranean Sea, the influence
of the temperature parameter on salt deformation should not be overlooked and warrants further investigation.
