{"id":373621,"date":"2026-07-12T17:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/?p=373621"},"modified":"2026-07-12T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:16:23","slug":"the-mediterranean-basin-experienced-desiccation-5-5-million-years-ago-and-quickly-refilled-via-gibraltar-a-geological-occurrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/?p=373621","title":{"rendered":"The Mediterranean Basin Experienced Desiccation 5.5 Million Years Ago and Quickly Refilled via Gibraltar: A Geological Occurrence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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body.single-post h1.entry-title,body.single-post .entry-title{text-transform:none!important;}<\/p>\n

The Mediterranean appears eternal due to the brevity of human history. Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Carthage, and Istanbul are all situated around a sea that seems to predate recollection. Nevertheless, in geological terms, the basin has a more bizarre history: during part of the late Miocene, it was isolated from the Atlantic and shrank through evaporation, transforming large areas into salt flats, brine pools, and exposed seabeds.<\/p>\n

This phenomenon is referred to as the Messinian salinity crisis. In a 2009 Nature<\/em> paper<\/a>, Daniel Garcia-Castellanos and his team stated that around 5.6 million years ago, the Mediterranean became severed from the oceans and experienced significant desiccation due to evaporation. They posited that approximately 5.33 million years ago, Atlantic waters re-entered through what is now the Strait of Gibraltar, rapidly replenishing the basin during the Zanclean flood.<\/p>\n

This aspect continues to capture attention: not only did the Mediterranean become dry, but the reintroduction of the sea might have occurred astonishingly swiftly. The model from 2009 suggested that while low water inflows may have persisted for millennia initially, 90 percent of the water transfer could have transpired in a brief window of just a few months to two years. In such a scenario, sea levels within the Mediterranean might have surged by over 10 meters daily at peak instances.<\/p>\n

A sea transformed into a salt basin<\/h2>\n

The Mediterranean occupies a peculiar position on the planet. It is a vast, warm, semi-enclosed sea situated in a arid area, linked to the Atlantic through a narrow passageway. Presently, Atlantic waters perpetually flow into it via Gibraltar because evaporation depletes a significant amount of water from the Mediterranean’s surface. Without this influx, the basin would become saltier and decrease in size.<\/p>\n

During the Messinian salinity crisis, this passage was narrowed or shut as Africa and Eurasia continued their gradual tectonic collision. The outcome was not merely an ordinary low tide. The basin lost water at a rate surpassing replacement from rivers and rainfall. Massive deposits of salt and gypsum were left behind. Canyons were carved into the exposed edges. Portions of what is now the seabed turned into land or shallow, hypersaline waters.<\/p>\n

The magnitude is challenging to conceptualize. The current Mediterranean holds roughly 3.7 million cubic kilometers of water. Even if it never transformed into a completely barren desert, a reduction of several hundred meters to kilometers would have dramatically altered the familiar map. Coastlines would have receded far from their current spots. Islands would have emerged as elevated terrain above the basin floor. Rivers would have flowed into deep ravines as they approached the remaining water.<\/p>\n

The Gibraltar breach<\/h2>\n

The suggested conclusion is almost mechanical. Once Atlantic waters began to overflow or breach the barrier near Gibraltar, flowing water would have eroded the channel, deepening it. A deeper channel would enable more water to pass through. An increased volume of water would lead to more rapid erosion. This feedback loop transforms a gradual reconnection into a potential megaflood.<\/p>\n

Garcia-Castellanos and colleagues utilized borehole and seismic data to map an eroded channel over 200 kilometers long across the Gibraltar area. They interpreted its shape as indicative of floodwater scarring rather than typical river erosion. Their model anticipated discharges of around 100 million cubic meters per second at peak flow, roughly three orders of magnitude greater than the current Amazon River.<\/p>\n

This does not imply that the basin filled like a bathtub from a single faucet at a constant rate. The authors distinguished a likely prolonged initial phase from a much swifter concluding phase. The key figure is the rapid phase: most of the transfer, according to their model, occurred within months to two years.<\/p>\n

Newer evidence from Sicily<\/h2>\n

The megaflood concept is supported by more than just one publication. In 2024, Aaron Micallef, Giovanni Barreca and their team released an open-access study in Communications Earth & Environment<\/em><\/a> reporting on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

body.single-post h1.entry-title,body.single-post .entry-title{text-transform:none!important;} The Mediterranean appears eternal due to the brevity of human history. Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Carthage, and Istanbul are all situated around a sea that seems to predate recollection. Nevertheless, in geological terms, the basin has a more bizarre history: during part of the late Miocene, it was isolated from the Atlantic and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-373621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-source-scienceblog-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/373622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}