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 long-held assumption, reconsideration of the available tsunami, bathymetric, seismic, and seismological data indicates that the tsunami was generated by an underwater landslide.