The Mediterranean Sea lost 70% of its water 5.5 million years ago, reveals a new study led by France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The study, the results of which were published Monday in the specialist journal Nature Communications, highlighted “the significant fall in the level of the Mediterranean Sea during the Messinian salinity crisis, a major geological event which transformed the Mediterranean into a gigantic salt basin between 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago,” specifies the French Research Center in a press release.
The way in which a million cubic kilometers of salt accumulated on the Mediterranean ocean floor in a short period remained unknown until now, notes the CNRS, which is counting on the results of this research to provide “a better understanding of extreme geological phenomena past, the evolution of the Mediterranean region and its repercussions on a global scale.
As part of this study, carried out with the support of the European Union, scientists were able, thanks to an analysis of the chlorine isotopes contained in the salts extracted from the bottom of the Mediterranean, to retrace “the two phases of this extreme drying “.
This is a first phase, of around 35,000 years, where “salts were deposited in the eastern part of the Mediterranean due to a partial restriction of its flow towards the Atlantic”, followed by a second, shorter (less than 10,000 years), where “salts accumulated throughout the Mediterranean, causing a rapid drying of the sea, with a drop in water levels from 1.7 to 2 .1 kilometers in the eastern Mediterranean and approximately 850 meters in its western part.
“Thus, the Mediterranean basin lost up to 70% of its water volume,” notes the study which estimates that this spectacular drop in sea level would have had consequences on terrestrial fauna and the Mediterranean landscape.
And to add that this phenomenon would also have triggered volcanic eruptions in this region due to the lightening of the earth’s crust, and would have generated climatic effects on a global scale linked to the depression thus created.
With MAP
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