Colossal Flood Created the Mediterranean Sea

Live Science ^ | Dec 9, 2009 | Andrea Thompson

[decimon]

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

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But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known.

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[decimon]

Ebb and flow ping.

[refermech]

Was Moses involved?

[OldDeckHand]

"But rather than rushing over in a giant version of Niagara Falls, the flood likely took the shape of a huge water ramp several miles wide, descending from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean,"

That must have been something to behold.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Global warming due to SUV chariots?

[JoeProBono]

[cripplecreek]

One heck of a waterslide.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[sniper63]

"Global warming due to SUV chariots?"

Too much Co2 exhaled by Dinasaurs.

[OldNavyVet]

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

In addition, the following comes from Steve Jones’ book “Darwin’s Ghost” page 239), a modern rewrite of Darwin’s “Origin.”

The Mediterranean has an unexpected history. It has been not one, but several seas (and, now and again, deserts). Five million years ago, it was dry, because the last of many great evaporations had left a layer of salt a mile thick across its floor. Some of its inundations were from its eastern end and brought warm-water plants and animals that were well adapted to the tepid waters of what is, of its nature, a subtropical ocean. The Mediterranean’s modern waters, though, came from the Atlantic, over the great falls of Gibraltar. Because it last filled from the west, the Mediterranean is now a warm sea filled with the descendants of plants and animals from a cold ocean. At the end of the last ice age, just eighteen thousand years ago, there were polar bears in the South of France, and even today the Mediterranean has its own whales and seals.

[OldNavyVet]

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

In addition, the following comes from Steve Jones’ book “Darwin’s Ghost” page 239), a modern rewrite of Darwin’s “Origin.”

The Mediterranean has an unexpected history. It has been not one, but several seas (and, now and again, deserts). Five million years ago, it was dry, because the last of many great evaporations had left a layer of salt a mile thick across its floor. Some of its inundations were from its eastern end and brought warm-water plants and animals that were well adapted to the tepid waters of what is, of its nature, a subtropical ocean. The Mediterranean’s modern waters, though, came from the Atlantic, over the great falls of Gibraltar. Because it last filled from the west, the Mediterranean is now a warm sea filled with the descendants of plants and animals from a cold ocean. At the end of the last ice age, just eighteen thousand years ago, there were polar bears in the South of France, and even today the Mediterranean has its own whales and seals.

[El Sordo]

[Zeppo]

But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known.

Alien terraforming engineer trainee to alien terraforming engineering supervisor:

"What happens if I push this button?"

[556x45]

...or somehow Bush was involved (his fault).

Aren’t those the lib answers to all questions to which blame can be attributed???

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon! A two-fer! One of the authors of this:

Noah's Flood:
The New Scientific Discoveries
About The Event That Changed History
by William Ryan Walter Pitman

...was involved in the discovery of the formerly dried-out Mediterranean. :')

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[SunkenCiv]

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[xcamel]

IIRC.. it formed twice..., and was flooded twice. (Hence the great salt deposits under the med now...)

[Little Bill]

This is really old breaking News, I might have to search down in the depths of my book storage for a book by a Chinese geologist who did Deep Core drilling in the Med way back.

[blam]

"IIRC.. it formed twice..., and was flooded twice. (Hence the great salt deposits under the med now...)"

The Med has completely dried out at least 40 times. The last time it completely dried was 5 million years ago. This information is from Ryan & Pittman's book that SunkenCiv posted in post #14.

Now, it is my suspicion that the Med has become severely dessicated a number of times since then but not completely dry....maybe as recent as about 8,000 years ago, prior to the salt water flooding of the Black Sea..

[xcamel]

The point was that it had to dry out long enough for an impermeable cap to form over the salt deposits...

[SunkenCiv]

Maybe he was trying to dig down, uh, forget it...

I think the first suspicion was raised during the prelim to the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Checking for the depth of the bedrock, the engineers found that the Nile runs atop a filled-in gorge, not unlike many a river gorge in our own southwest. When the Mediterranean was mostly dry land, the Nile flowed into it at quite a bit lower elevation. After the Atlantic surged in, the seawater backed up into the gorge for many miles, probably helped fill it in, and the rest was contributed by the silt-bearing Nile flood. :')

from a November 30, 2006 article linked at the source; probably has already appeared as a topic on FR, but if not...

Maximum wave crests heights predicted by a computer simulation of the ancient event. Blue lines are arrival times of the first tsunami waves. Credit: AGU

Still images from a computer animation showing the spread of the tsunami waves triggered by the Mt. Etna avalanche 8,000 years ago. Credit: Instito Nazionale di Geofisica e Vuocanologia