A Megaflood-Powered Mile-High Waterfall Refilled the Mediterranean [Video]
By Katherine Kornei on March 26, 2018
Six million years ago the Mediterranean Sea was a very different place than it is today. Plate tectonics had closed the Strait of Gibraltar separating modern-day Spain and Morocco, leaving the Mediterranean cut off from the Atlantic Ocean. The newly enclosed sea succumbed to evaporation, its water level falling by thousands of meters, turning it into a desertlike environment pockmarked with shallow pools as salty as today’s Dead Sea.
One hypothesis suggests a megaflood rapidly refilled the Mediterranean. Now, a study of buried ocean sediments near Sicily shows this flood may have washed all the way into the sea’s partially filled eastern basin via a waterfall about 1,500 meters high.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-megaflood-powered-mile-high-waterfall-refilled-the-mediterranean-video/
