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Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago. The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin. The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters... show that the resulting flood could have filled the basin within two years. The team was led by Daniel Garcia-Castellanos from the Research Council of Spain (CSIC)... Using existing borehole and seismic data, his team showed how the flood would have begun with water spilling over a...

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. Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed. Scientists also largely agree that the Mediterranean basin was refilled when the movements of Earth's crustal plates caused the ground around the Gibraltar Strait to subside, allowing the ocean waters of the Atlantic to cut through the rock separating the...

The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco Revealing discoveries  Expedition: "The Ibero-Marroqui Atlantis '"   By Maria Fdez-Valmayor  A Scientific Expedition has started off at the end of this summer for the area of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of possible ruins of the well-known civilization like Atlantis by Plato. According to the project? Atlantis Ibero-Moroccan, between the coasts of southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the northwest of Africa evidences of cities or submerged coastal villages of the Age of the Bronze would have to be, that could belong to the Island or Peninsula of Atlantis. The expedition...

Search for "Lost" Atlantis Centers on Strait of Gibraltar The Record, Bergen County, New Jersey January 4, 2002 It was Plato, around 360 B.C., who first described an ancient, exotic island kingdom catastrophically buried beneath the sea when its once-virtuous people angered the gods with their pronounced tilt toward sin and corruption. Since then, creative souls ranging from Jules Verne to Kirk Morris, Maria Montez, Fay Spain, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael J. Fox, and Walt Disney have sought to explain and exploit the terrible fate that befell Atlantis. Vases from Atlantis? Archaeologists made an important find in the 1960s, lending support ...

True or false? Eight hundred years ago, a monk did his best to erase a copy of some of Archimedes' most important work, putting some prayers on the parchment instead, and the words of the great Greek mathematician were then gone forever. False. At Stanford University in California, some scientists are using X-ray technology to make the older ink shine through the later scribbling, thereby recovering a remarkable piece of history and doing something else to boot. They are giving us an illustration among many of how a civilization made great in part by the Greeks of antiquity remains great...

Three ancient Romanian maps bolster accuracy of “Persian Gulf” name VIENNA (IRNA) -- Three ancient maps kept in a Romanian academy confirm the accuracy of the name Persian Gulf to denote waters off the southern coast of Iran, said an Iranian embassy official in Bucharest Friday. Speaking to IRNA, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that researches made by the Romanian academy uncovered a map called "Asiac Nova Descripto" dating back to 1584 in which the Persian Gulf is historically referred to as "Mar Mesendin Ol Sinus Persicus." The Romanian academy is one of the most important...

A Spanish research team, using 3-D reflection seismology, has for the first time mapped the geomorphological features of the Ebro river basin 5 to 6 million years ago. The images obtained show that the surface analysed is today 2.5 or 3 kilometres below the sea bed. "The results shed light on the way in which the sea level fell during the Messinian (between 5.33 and 6 million years ago), and imply that the subsequent inundation of the river margins happened extremely quickly," says Roger Urgeles, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Department of Marine Geology of...

Search for sushi draining Mediterranean's red tuna stocks by Marie-Noelle Valles Mon May 29, 6:16 PM ET Too much demand for sushi from Japan may finish off stocks of red tuna running dangerously low in the Mediterranean owing to overfishing, say environmentalists from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "Japan absorbs between 90 and 95 percent of catches of red tuna and the Mediterranean version is especially appreciated," explains Jose Luis Garcia, head of the WWF oceans section. The price of a prize red tuna can top 50,000 euros (60,000 dollars) on the Japanese market. "In opening new markets,...

While it might have been dismissed as underwater junk by the untrained eye, the archaeologists soon realised they had discovered a vital clue to a lost civilisation. The timber was not isolated. In fact they found another 23 pieces of all shapes and sizes intersecting throughout the underwater cliff off Bouldnor, on the north coast of the Isle of Wight. They are now convinced the timber is evidence of a huge wooden structure built about 8,000 years ago by our Mesolithic ancestors. Garry Momber has been excavating the 1km-long site for more than a decade and believes it is the...

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

Approximately five million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up after it was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean. According to earth scientist Rob Govers of Utrecht University, a reduction in the weight on the Earth's crust led to the Straits of Gibraltar moving upwards. Govers will publish his conclusions in the February issue of the earth sciences journal Geology. Much like a mattress springs back into shape after you get off it, the Earth's crust moves upwards when sea levels fall. Known as isostasy, this phenomenon explains how the Mediterranean Sea was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean five...

The Mediterranean Was a Desert Alan Feuerbacher In the past three decades convincing evidence has been found that the Mediterranean Sea has completely dried up at least once, and probably many times. The first solid evidence came in the summer of 1970, when geologists aboard the deep sea research and drilling ship Glomar Challenger brought up drill cores containing gypsum, rock salt, and various other minerals that could only have been formed by drying up of seawater. What was remarkable was that these minerals were found on the ocean floor, one to three kilometers deep, buried under as much as...