A group of researchers has discovered that Lanzarote, Tenerife and Gran Canaria recorded at least five megatsunamis during the last million years, which, in the case of the last island, would have generated waves of up to 290 meters in Agaete.
This has been revealed in a new scientific publication that has been collected in the journal GeoHazards and disseminated by EFE, which explains that these megatsunamis would have been caused by gigantic landslides and, occasionally, by explosive volcanic eruptions.
The work has been led by Mercedes Ferrer, from the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME), and Luis González de Vallejo, director of Geological Risks of the Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan), who have investigated the megatsunamis generated by large collapses of the flanks of the island volcanic buildings of the Canary Islands.
The main results of this work have been obtained from geological, geomorphological, paleontological and geochronological investigations carried out on the tsunami deposits identified in the three aforementioned islands, as well as their possible areas of origin and frequency.
For this purpose, fossiliferous marine deposits composed of chaotic conglomerates have been identified and described in detail in several sites in Tenerife (Teno and Isla Baja), Gran Canaria (Agaete) and Lanzarote (Piedra Alta). In all of them, according to the researchers, there are common sedimentological, geomorphological and paleontological features that unequivocally indicate that they were generated by a tsunami.
