this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025

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New evidence suggests megaflood refilled the Mediterranean Sea five million years ago (www.southampton.ac.uk)

submitted 2 days ago by HylicManoeuvre@sh.itjust.works to c/science@lemmy.world

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The study suggests the Zanclean Megaflood ended the Messinian Salinity Crisis, which lasted between 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago.

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[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Sea levels rise and fall with ice ages. There's a ton of ice sitting on Greenland and Antarctica right now that wasn't there 5 million years ago and sea levels (ocean) were 10 - 30m higher than they are today. And the Mediterranean fluctuated even more than that.

But, that said, there has definitely been some significant uplift (probably between 1km to 1.5km) involved from Africa and Europe colliding.

So the uplift dominates the sea level decline (outside of events like the one the article is about), but the exact position of the coastline is still dependent on the sea level.