On the cause of the 1908 Messina tsunami, Southern Italy.

A century after the catastrophic event, the sources of the 1908 Messina, Southern Italy, earthquake and tsunami, which caused at least 60,000 deaths, remain uncertain. Through a simple backward ray-tracing method, we convert the tsunami travel-time data reported in a 100-years-old paper into distances and find that the sources of the earthquake and tsunami are different. Overturning a longheld assumption, reconsideration of the available tsunami, bathymetric, seismic, and seismological data indicates that the tsunami was generated by an underwater landslide. Citation: Billi, A., R. Funiciello, L. Minelli, C. Faccenna, G. Neri, B. Orecchio, and D. Presti (2008), On the cause of the 1908 Messina tsunami, southern Italy, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L06301, doi:10.1029/2008GL033251.