New evidence suggests megaflood refilled the Mediterranean Sea five million years ago
New evidence suggests megaflood refilled the Mediterranean Sea five million years ago
New evidence suggests megaflood refilled the Mediterranean Sea five million years ago
The study suggests the Zanclean Megaflood ended the Messinian Salinity Crisis, which lasted between 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago.
"discovery of an erosion channel stretching from the Gulf of Cadiz to the Alboran Sea in 2009."
Weird they don't just say "Strait of Gibraltar". Must have been something to see when that dam burst.
I'm also fascinated by the theory that the flood of Noah and Gilgamesh may have been a similar event from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea, which apparently been fresh water at one point before becoming inundated.
That erosion evidence would go through the Strait, but the point is that they found it from well into the Atlantic and on into the Mediterranean. Erosion in the Strait alone wouldn't be enough to suggest massive water movement.
There's a series of books written years ago that explore a group of people that go back in time to before the flooding, and during their wars/fighting, they open the Gibraltar strait and the flood begins. It was a series that really stuck with me, well written.
Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May.
Seems interesting, thanks!
Interesting. Five million years is not so long in geological time, so how is that such "exposed section of lithified sediment deformed by the megaflood" (note photo) are now above sea-level, did Sicily rise so much since then?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Sea levels rise and fall with ice ages. There's a ton of ice sitting on Greenland and Antarctica right now that wasn't there 5 million years ago and sea levels (ocean) were 10 - 30m higher than they are today. And the Mediterranean fluctuated even more than that.
But, that said, there has definitely been some significant uplift (probably between 1km to 1.5km) involved from Africa and Europe colliding.
So the uplift dominates the sea level decline (outside of events like the one the article is about), but the exact position of the coastline is still dependent on the sea level.
I read this in Wikipedia about a year ago.
Ahead of the curve I see!