Posted on 01/11/2010 11:13:34 AM PST by JoeProBono
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 two basins and refill the sea.
But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known.
A new study that used seismic data and holes drilled into the rock at the strait revealed that the ocean water cut a 124-mile- (200-kilometer-) long channel across the strait over the course of several thousand years.
The team that conducted the study estimates that the water flowed across slowly at first, over a period of several thousand years. (Though slow in this case is still three times the rate of discharge of the Amazon River today.) But 90 percent of the water likely came over in a rush over the course of several months to two years. Peak rates of water level rise in the basin may have been as high as 33 feet (10 meters) per day, the study authors report.
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....
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
You had to start, didn’t you.
Interesting that they mention Niagara Falls. There is a dissertation about how they think the Niagara River began at American Memory...I thought of it as I began to read this little ditty as there is a similarity...
You just know that Bush, Chenney and Haliburton caused this!
That would have been something to see!
NIAGARA FALLS.....Slowly...I...turned...step...by...step....inch...by...inch...
I read a scientific article about this 30+ years ago. The flood did not create the Med, the Med dried up over many millenia when the strait at Gibralter closed. They know it dried up because of the salt domes found at the bottom of the Med which only form as a salty body of water dries up. When the blockage at the strait broke open again it would have created a waterfall so large that its roar would have been heard for hundreds of miles. It did not refill immediately, it refilled to level over a longer period of time.
Suppose the same thing happened w/ Lake Erie ? There are salt mines under the lake...
So Moses was 5.3 million years ago when he rode on the ark of the covenant?
Yeah, but what ancient culture indicates in its history a catastrophic flood?? I mean name ONE.
There have been many catastrophic floods throughout history and all over the world and most cultures have some story about one or more. This one is 5.6 million years so I really doubt you’ll find some ancient culture with writing about something that old.
A major flood from the Mediterranean sea to the Black sea is possibly what is thought of the source for the Biblical and Sumerian accounts.
Mesopotamian? (The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a catastrophic flood.)
LOL you are old to remember that one...(me too :O(
Largest salt mine I believe is under Detroit....
chuckles to you, thats the story of my life...a day late and a dollar short....:O(
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