Messinian salinity crisis

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The Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC), also referred to

as the Messinian Event, and in its latest stage as the Key events in the Neogene
Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which view • discuss •
the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or 0— ←Holocene begins
nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of
– 11.7 ka ago
the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to Quaternary
5.33 Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean -2 —
flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.[2][1] – P Piacenzian
l
-4 —
i
o
Sediment samples from below the deep seafloor of the c Zanclean
Mediterranean Sea, which include evaporite minerals, – e
n
soils, and fossil plants, indicate that the precursor of the -6 — e ←
Messinian
Strait of Gibraltar closed tight about 5.96 million years –
Messinian salinity
ago, sealing the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. crisis[1]
-8 —
This resulted in a period of partial desiccation of the C
Mediterranean Sea, the first of several such periods –e
nN Tortonian
during the late Miocene.[3] After the strait closed for the -10 — o e
z o
o g
last time around 5.6 Ma, the region's generally dry –i e
c n
climate conditions at the time caused the Mediterranean -12 — e
basin to nearly dry out completely within a mere Serravallian
– M
millennium. This massive desiccation left a deep and
-14 —
i
dry basin, reaching a depth of 3 to 5 km (1.9 to 3.1 mi) o
c
below normal sea level, with a few hypersaline pockets – e Langhian
n
similar to today's Dead Sea. Then, around 5.5 Ma, less -16 — e
dry climatic conditions resulted in the basin receiving
–
more freshwater from rivers, progressively filling and
diluting the hypersaline lakes into larger pockets of -18 — Burdigalian
brackish water (much like today's Caspian sea). The –
Messinian Salinity Crisis ended with the Strait of
-20 —
Gibraltar finally reopening 5.33 Ma, when the Atlantic
rapidly filled up the Mediterranean basin in what is –
Aquitanian
known as the Zanclean flood.[4] -22 —
–
Even today, the Mediterranean is considerably saltier Paleogene
-24 —
than the North Atlantic due to its near isolation by the An approximate timescale of key Neogene
Strait of Gibraltar and its high rate of evaporation. If the events.
Strait of Gibraltar closes again (which is likely to Vertical axis: millions of years ago.
happen in the near future on a geological time scale),
the Mediterranean would mostly evaporate in about a thousand years,[5] after which continued northward
movement of Africa may obliterate the Mediterranean altogether.

Contents
1 Naming and first evidence
2 Confirmation and further evidence
3 Chronology
3.1 Several cycles
3.2 Synchronism versus diachronism—deep water versus shallow water evaporites
4 Causes
 5 Relationship to climate
6 Effects
6.1 Effects on biology
6.2 Global effects
6.3 Dehydrated geography
7 Replenishment
8 In popular culture
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links

Naming and first evidence

In the 19th century, the Swiss geologist and paleontologist Karl Mayer-Eymar (1826–1907) studied fossils
embedded between gypsum-bearing, brackish, and freshwater sediment layers, and identified them as having
been deposited just before the end of the Miocene Epoch. In 1867, he named the period the Messinian after the
Messina region of Sicily, Italy.[6] Since then, several other salt-rich and gypsum-rich evaporite layers
throughout the Mediterranean region have been dated to the same period.[7]

Confirmation and further evidence

Seismic surveying of the Mediterranean basin in 1961 revealed a geological feature some 100–200 m (330–
660 ft) below the seafloor. This feature, dubbed the M reflector, closely followed the contours of the present
seafloor, suggesting that it was laid down evenly and consistently at some point in the past. The origin of this
layer was largely interpreted as related to salt deposition. However, different interpretations were proposed for
the age of salt and its deposition.

Earlier suggestions from Denizot in 1957[8] and Ruggieri in 1967[9] proposed that this layer was of Late
Miocene age, and the same Ruggieri coined the term Messinian Salinity Crisis.

New and high-quality seismic data on the M-reflector were acquired in the Mediterranean Basin in 1970,
published by e.g. Auzende et al. (1971).[10] At the same time, the salt was cored during Leg 13 of the Deep Sea
Drilling Program conducted from the Glomar Challenger under the supervision of co-chief scientists William
B.F. Ryan and Kenneth J. Hsu. These deposits were dated and interpreted for the first time as deep-basin
products of the Messinian Salinity Crisis.

The first drilling of the Messinian salt at the deeper parts of the
Mediterranean Sea came in the summer of 1970, when geologists
aboard the Glomar Challenger brought up drill cores containing arroyo
gravels and red and green floodplain silts; and gypsum, anhydrite, rock
salt, and various other evaporite minerals that often form from drying of
brine or seawater, including in a few places potash, left where the last
bitter, mineral-rich waters dried up. One drill core contained a wind-
blown cross-bedded deposit of deep-sea foraminiferal ooze that had
dried into dust and been blown about on the hot dry abyssal plain by
sandstorms, mixed with quartz sand blown in from nearby continents, Cones of gypsum, which formed on
and ended up in a brine lake interbedded between two layers of halite. the sea floor as a result of
These layers alternated with layers containing marine fossils, indicating evaporation. Evaporation of one metre
a succession of drying and flooding periods. of seawater precipitates around 1 mm
of gypsum.
The massive presence of salt does not require a desiccation of the
sea.[11] The main evidence for the evaporative drawdown of the
Mediterranean comes from the remains of many (now submerged)
canyons that were cut into the sides of the dry Mediterranean basin by
rivers flowing down to the abyssal plain.[12][13] For example, the Nile
cut its bed down to several hundred feet below sea level at Aswan
(where Ivan S. Chumakov found marine Pliocene foraminifers in 1967),
and 2,500 m (8,200 ft) below sea level just north of Cairo.[14]

In many places in the Mediterranean, fossilized cracks have been found The scale of gypsum formation in the
where muddy sediment had dried and cracked in the sunlight and Sorbas basin (Yesares member). The
drought. In the Western Mediterranean series, the presence of pelagic upward-growing cones suggest
oozes interbedded within the evaporites suggests that the area was precipitation on the sea floor (not
repeatedly flooded and desiccated over the course of 700,000 years.[15] within sediments).

Chronology
Based on palaeomagnetic datings of Messinian deposits that have since been brought above sea level by
tectonic activity, the salinity crisis started at the same time over all the Mediterranean basin, at 5.96 ± 0.02
million years ago. This episode comprises the second part of what is called the "Messinian" age of the Miocene
epoch. This age was characterised by several stages of tectonic activity and sea level fluctuations, as well as
erosional and depositional events, all more or less interrelated (van Dijk et al., 1998).[16]

The Mediterranean-Atlantic strait closed tight time and time again, and the Mediterranean Sea, for the first time
and then repeatedly, partially desiccated. The basin was finally isolated from the Atlantic Ocean for a longer
period, between 5.59 and 5.33 million years ago, resulting in a large or smaller (depending on the scientific
model applied) lowering of the Mediterranean sea level. During the initial, very dry stages (5.6–5.5 Ma), there
was extensive erosion, creating several huge canyon systems.[12][13] (some similar in scale to the Grand
Canyon) around the Mediterranean. Later stages (5.50–5.33 Ma) are marked by cyclic evaporite deposition into
a large "lake-sea" basin ("Lago Mare" event).

About 5.33 million years ago, at the start of the Zanclean age (at the start of the Pliocene epoch), the barrier at
the Strait of Gibraltar broke one last time, re-flooding the Mediterranean basin in the Zanclean flood (Blanc,
2002;[17] Castellanos et al., 2009[18]), favouring slope destabilization (Gargani et al., 2014).[19] The basin has
not desiccated since.

Several cycles

The amount of Messinian salts has been estimated as around 4·1018 kg (but this estimate may be reduced by 50
to 75% when more information becomes available[20]) and more than 1 million cubic kilometres,[21] exceeding
by a factor of 50 the amount of salt normally contained in the Mediterranean waters. This suggests either a
succession of desiccations or a long period of hypersalinity during which incoming water from the Atlantic
Ocean was evaporated with the level of the Mediterranean brine being similar to that of the Atlantic.[22] The
nature of the strata points strongly to several cycles of the Mediterranean Sea completely drying and being
refilled (Gargani and Rigollet, 2007[3]), with drying periods correlating to periods of cooler global
temperatures; which were therefore drier in the Mediterranean region. Each refilling was presumably caused by
a seawater inlet opening, either tectonically, or by a river flowing eastwards below sea level into the
"Mediterranean Sink" cutting its valley head back west until it let the sea in, similarly to a river capture. The
last refilling was at the Miocene/Pliocene boundary, when the Strait of Gibraltar broke wide open
permanently.[18] Upon closely examining the Hole 124 core, Kenneth J. Hsu found that:
 The oldest sediment of each cycle was either deposited in a deep sea or in a great brackish lake.
The fine sediments deposited on a quiet or deep bottom had perfectly even lamination. As the basin
was drying up and the water depth decreased, lamination became more irregular on account of
increasing wave agitation. Stromatolite was formed then, when the site of deposition fell within an
intertidal zone. The intertidal flat was eventually exposed by the final desiccation, at which time
anhydrite was precipitated by saline ground water underlying sabkhas. Suddenly seawater would
spill over the Strait of Gibraltar, or there would be an unusual influx of brackish water from the
eastern European lake. The Balearic abyssal plain would then again be under water. The chicken-
wire anhydrite would thus be abruptly buried under the fine muds brought in by the next deluge.

(Hsu, 1983)[23]

Research since then has suggested that the desiccation-flooding cycle may have repeated several times[24][25]
during the last 630,000 years of the Miocene epoch. This could explain the large amount of salt deposited.
Recent studies, however, show that the repeated desiccation and flooding is unlikely from a geodynamic point
of view.[26][27]

Synchronism versus diachr onism—deep water versus shallow w ater evaporites

Some major questions remain concerning the beginning of the crisis in the central Mediterranean Basin. The
geometric physical link between the evaporitic series identified in marginal basins accessible for field studies,
such as the Tabernas basin and Sorbas basin, and the evaporitic series of the central basins has never been
made.

Using the concept of deposition in both shallow and deep basins during the Messinian (i.e. assuming that both
Basin types existed during this period), two major groupings are evident: one that favours a synchronous
deposition (image c) of the first evaporites in all the basins before the major phase of erosion (Krijgsman et al.,
1999);[28] and the other that favours a diachronous deposition (image a) of the evaporites through more than
one phases of desiccation which would first have affected the marginal basins and later the central basins
(Clauzon et al., 1996).[4]

Another school suggests that desiccation was synchronous, but occurred mainly in shallower basins. This
model would suggest that the sea level of the whole Mediterranean basin fell at once, but only shallower basins
dried out enough to deposit salt beds. See image b.

As highlighted in the work of van Dijk (1992)[29] and van Dijk et al. (1998) [16] the history of desiccation and
erosion was complexely interacting with tectonic uplift and subsidence events, and erosional episodes. They
also questioned again like some previous authors had done, whether the basins now observed as "deep" were
actually also deep during the Messinian Episode and gave different names to the end-member scenarios
described above.

Distinguishing between these hypotheses requires the calibration of gypsum deposits. Gypsum is the first salt
(calcium sulphate) to be deposited from a desiccating basin. Magnetostratigraphy offers a broad constraint on
timing, but no fine detail. Therefore, cyclostratigraphy is relied upon to compare the dates of sediments. The
typical case study compares the gypsum evaporites in the main Mediterranean basin with those of the Sorbas
basin, a smaller basin on the flanks of the Mediterranean Sea that is now exposed in southern Spain. The
relationship between these two basins is assumed to represent the relationships of the wider region.

Recent work has relied on cyclostratigraphy to correlate the underlying marl beds, which appear to have given
way to gypsum at exactly the same time in both basins (Krijgsman, 2001) .[30] The proponents of this
hypothesis claim that cyclic variations in bed compositions are astronomically tuned, and the beds' magnitude
can be calibrated to show they were contemporaneous—a strong argument. In order to refute it, it is necessary
to propose an alternative mechanism for generating
these cyclic bands, or for erosion to have
coincidentally removed just the right amount of
sediment everywhere before the gypsum was
deposited. The proponents claim that the gypsum
was deposited directly above the correlated marl
layers, and slumped into them, giving the
appearance of an unconformable contact.[30]
However, their opponents seize upon this apparent
inconformity, and claim that the Sorbas basin was
exposed—therefore eroding—while the
Mediterranean sea was depositing evaporites. This
would result in the Sorbas basin being filled with
evaporites at 5.5 million years ago (Ma), compared
to the main basin at 5.96 Ma.(Riding, 2000;[31]
Braga, 2006[32]).

Recent works have highlighted a pre-evaporite

phase corresponding to a prominent erosional crisis
(also named "Messinian Erosional crisis"; the
termination of the "Mes-1" unconformity bound
depositional sequence of van Dijk, 1992)[29]
responding to a major drawdown of the
Mediterranean seawater (Bache et al., 2009) .[33]
Assuming that this major drawdown corresponds to
the major Messinian drawdown, they concluded
that the Mediterranean bathymetry significantly
decreased before the precipitation of central basins
evaporites. Regarding these works, a deep water
formation seems unlikely. The assumption that
central basin evaporites partly deposited under a
high bathymetry and before the major phase of
erosion should imply the observation of a major
detritic event above evaporites in the basin. Such a
depositional geometry has not been observed on
data. This theory corresponds to one of the end-
member scenarios discussed by van Dijk et al. (1998).[16]
Hypotheses of evaporite formation during the MSC.
a: Diachronous deposition: Evaporites (pink) were deposited
in landward basins first, and closer to the Atlantic as the
extent of the Mediterranean Sea (dark blue) diminished
towards the gateway. The light blue shows the original sea
level.
b: Synchronous deposition in marginal basins. Sea level
drops slightly, but the whole basin is still connected to the
Atlantic. Reduced inflow allows the accumulation of
evaporites in shallow basins only. c: Synchronous, basin-
wide deposition. Closure or restriction of the Atlantic seaway
by tectonic activity (dark grey) causes evaporite deposition
simultaneously across the entire basin; the basin may not
need to empty completely, as salts are concentrated by
evaporation.

Causes
Several possible causes of the series of Messinian crises have been considered. While there is disagreement on
all fronts, the most general consensus seems to agree that climate had a role in forcing the periodic filling and
emptying of the basins, and that tectonic factors must have played a part in controlling the height of the sills
restricting flow between the Atlantic and Mediterranean (Gargani and Rigollet, 2007).[34] The magnitude and
extent of these effects, however, is widely open to interpretation (see, e.g., van Dijk et al. (1998).[16]

In any case, the causes of the closing and isolation of the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean must be
found in the area where nowadays the Strait of Gibraltar is located. In that area, one of the tectonic boundaries
between the African Plate and the European Plate and its southern fragments such as the Iberian Plate, is
located. This boundary Zone is characterised by the presence of an arc shaped tectonic feature, the Gibraltar
Arc, which includes southern Spain and northern Africa. In the present day area of the Mediterranean Sea, three
of these arc shaped belts are present: the Gibraltar Arc, the Calabrian Arc, and the Aegean Arc. The kinematics
and dynamics of this plate boundary and of the Gibraltar Arc during the late Miocene are strictly related to the
causes of the Messinian Salinity Crisis: Tectonic reconfiguration may have closed and re-opened passages; the
region where the connection with the Atlantic Ocean was situated is permeated by strike-slip faults and rotating
blocks of continental crust. As faulting accommodated the regional compression caused by Africa's
convergence with Eurasia, the geography of the region may have altered enough to open and close seaways.
However, the precise tectonic activity behind the motion can be interpreted in a number of ways. An extensive
discussion can be found in Weijermars (1988).[35]

Any model must explain a variety of features of the area:

Shortening and extension occur at the same time in close proximity; sedimentary sequences and their
relations to fault activity constrain the rates of uplift and subsidence quite precisely
Fault-bounded continental blocks can often be observed to rotate
The depth and structure of the lithosphere is constrained by records of seismic activity, as well as
tomography
The composition of igneous rocks varies—this constrains the location and extent of any subduction.

There are three contending geodynamic models that may fit the data, models which have been discussed in an
equal way for the other arc shaped features in the Mediterranean (for a systematic review see van Dijk &
Okkes, 1990):[36]

A moving subduction zone may have caused periodic regional uplift. Changes in volcanic rocks suggest
that subduction zones at the rim of the Tethys Sea may have rolled back westwards, changing the
chemistry and density in magma underlying the western Mediterranean (Lonergan & White, 1997).[37]
However, this does not account for the periodic emptying and refilling of the basin.
The same features can be explained by regional delamination (Turner, 1999)[38] or the loss of a layer of
the entire lithosphere (Seber, 1996).[39]
Deblobbing, the loss of a "blob" of lithospheric mantle, and the subsequent upward motion of the
overlying crust (which has lost its dense mantle "anchor") may also have caused the observed phenomena
(Platt & Vissers, 1989)[40] although the validity of the "deblobbing" hypothesis has been called into
question (Jackson et al., 2004).[41]

Of these, only the first model, invoking rollback, seems to explain the rotations observed. However, it is
difficult to fit it with the pressure and temperature histories of some metamorphic rocks (Platt et al., 1998).[42]

This has led to some interesting combinations of the models which at first hand looked bizarre, in attempts to
approach the true state of affairs (e.g. Jolivet et al., 2006;[43] Duggen et al., 2003[44]).

Changes in climate must almost certainly be invoked to explain the periodic nature of the events. They occur
during cool periods of Milankovic cycles, when less solar energy reached the Earth. This led to less evaporation
of the North Atlantic, hence less rainfall over the Mediterranean. This would have starved the basin of water
supply from rivers and allowed its desiccation.

Contrary to many people's instincts, there is now a scientific consensus that global sea level fluctuations cannot
have been the major cause, although it may have played a role. The lack of ice caps at the time means there was
no realistic mechanism to cause significant changes in sea level—there was nowhere for the water to go, and
the morphology of ocean basins cannot change on such a short timescale.

Relationship to climate
The climate of the abyssal plain during the drought is unknown. There is no situation on Earth directly
comparable to the dry Mediterranean, and thus it is not possible to know its climate. There is not even a
consensus as to whether the Mediterranean Sea even dried out completely; it seems likeliest that at least three
or four large brine lakes on the abyssal plains remained at all times. The extent of desiccation is very hard to
judge due to the reflective seismic nature of the salt beds, and the difficulty in drilling cores, making it difficult
to map their thickness.
Nonetheless, one can study the forces at play in the atmosphere to arrive at a good speculation of the climate.
As winds blew across the "Mediterranean Sink", they would heat or cool adiabatically with altitude. In the
empty Mediterranean Basin the summertime temperatures would probably have been extremely high even
during the coldest phase of any glacial era. Using the dry adiabatic lapse rate of around 10 °C (18 °F) per
kilometer, a theoretical temperature of an area 4 km (2.5 mi) below sea level would be about 40 °C (72 °F)
warmer than the temperature at sea level. Under this simplistic assumption, theoretical temperature maxima
would have been around 80 °C (176 °F) at the lowest depths of the dry abyssal plain permitting little life other
than extremophiles. One can also calculate that 3–5 km (2–3 mi) below sea level would have resulted in 1.45 to
1.71 atm (1,102 to 1,300 mmHg) of air pressure at the bottom. Although it was probably quite dry in the Basin,
there is no direct way to measure how much drier it would have been compared to its surroundings. Areas with
less severe depths would probably have been very dry.

Today the evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea supplies moisture that falls in frontal storms, but without
such moisture, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Italy, Greece, and the Levant would be limited
to the Iberian Peninsula and the western Maghreb. Climates throughout the central and eastern basin of the
Mediterranean and surrounding regions to the north and east would have been drier even above modern sea
level. The eastern Alps, the Balkans, and the Hungarian plain would also be much drier than they are today,
even if the westerlies prevailed as they do now. However, the Paratethys ocean provided water to the area north
of the Mediterranean basin. The Wallachian-Pontic and Hungarian basins were underwater during the Miocene,
modifying the climate of what is now the Balkans and other areas north of the Mediterranean basin. The
Pannonian Sea was a source of water north of the Mediterranean basin until the middle Pleistocene before
becoming the Hungarian plain. Debate exists whether the waters of the Wallachian-Pontic basin (and the
possibly connected Pannonian Sea) would have had access (thus bringing water) to at least the eastern
Mediterranean basin at times during the Miocene.

Effects
Effects on biology

The Messinian event also provided an opportunity

for many African species, including antelopes,
elephants and hippopotami, to migrate into the
empty basin, close to the descending great rivers, to
reach interior wetter cooler highlands such as
Malta: as the sea level was dropping, as such
species would not have been able to cross the wide
hot empty sink at maximum dryness. After the
return of the sea water, they remained on the
islands, where they underwent insular dwarfism
during the Pleistocene as on Crete (Hippopotamus
creutzburgi), on Cyprus (H. minor), on Malta (H.
melitensis) and Sicily (H. pentlandi). Of these, the
Cyprus Dwarf Hippopotamus survived until the end Artistic interpretation of the Mediterranean geography during
of the Pleistocene or early Holocene.[45][46] But its evaporative drawdown, after complete disconnection from
some of these species may have crossed the sea the Atlantic. The rivers carved deep gorges in the exposed
when it was flooded, washed out to sea on rafts of continental margins; The concentration of salt in the
floating vegetation, or with some species (e.g. remaining water bodies led to rapid precipitation. The inset
elephants) by swimming. evokes the transit of mammals (e.g., camels and mice) from
Africa to Iberia across the exposed Gibraltar Strait.
Global effects

The water from the Mediterranean would have been redistributed in the world ocean, raising global sea level by
as much as 10 m (33 ft). The Mediterranean basin also sequestered below its seabed a significant percentage of
the salt from Earth's oceans; this decreased the average salinity of the world ocean and raised its freezing
point.[22]

Dehydrated geography

The notion of a completely waterless Mediterranean

Sea has some corollaries.

At the time, the Strait of Gibraltar was not

open, but other seaways (the Betic corridor to
the north where the Sierra Nevada or Baetic
Cordillera is now, or to the south where the
Rifean corridor or corridors where the Rif
Mountains are now) linked the Mediterranean
to the Atlantic. These must have closed,
isolating the basin from the open ocean.
The high level of salinity cannot be tolerated Play media
by many known organisms, a factor in Messinian salinity crisis animation
reducing the biodiversity of much of the
basin.
The basin's low altitude would have made it extremely hot during
the summer through adiabatic heating, a conclusion supported by
the presence of anhydrite, which is only deposited in water
warmer than 35 °C (95 °F).[47][48]
Rivers emptying into the basin would have cut their beds much
deeper (at least a further 2,400 m (7,900 ft) in the case of the Nile,
as the buried canyon under Cairo shows)[49][50] and in the Rhone
valley (Gargani, 2004).[51]

Replenishment
When the Strait of Gibraltar was ultimately breached, the Atlantic
Ocean would have poured a vast volume of water through what would
have presumably been a relatively narrow channel. This refill has been A possible palaeogeographical
envisaged as resulting in a large waterfall higher than today's Angel reconstruction of the west end of the
Falls at 979 m (3,212 ft), and far more powerful than either the Iguazu Miocene Mediterranean. North to the
Falls or the Niagara Falls, but recent studies of the underground left.
structures at the Gibraltar Strait show that the flooding channel current coastline
descended in a rather gradual way to the dry Mediterranean.[18] S Sorbas basin, Spain
R Rifean corridor
B Betic corridor
In popular culture G Strait of Gibraltar
M Mediterranean sea
There had been speculations about a possible dehydration of the
Mediterranean Sea in the distant past, even before geology developed.

In the first century, Pliny the Elder recounted a popular story in his Natural History according to which
the Mediterranean Sea was created when the Atlantic ocean gained admission through the Strait of
Gibraltar:

At the narrowest part of the Straits, there are mountains placed to form barriers to the
entrance on either side, Abyla in Africa, and Calpe in Europe, the boundaries formerly of the
Labours of Hercules. Hence it is that the inhabitants have called them the Columns of that
god; they also believe that they were dug through by him; upon which the sea, which was
before excluded, gained admission, and so changed the face of nature.[52]
 In 1920, H. G. Wells published a popular history book in which it
was suggested that the Mediterranean basin had in the past been
cut off from the Atlantic. One piece of physical evidence, a deep
channel past Gibraltar, had been noticed. Wells estimated that the
basin had refilled roughly between 30,000 and 10,000 BC.[53]
The theory he printed was that:[53]
In the last Ice Age, so much ocean water was taken into the
ice caps that world ocean level dropped below the sill in the
Strait of Gibraltar.
Without the inflow from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean
Wells' 1920s speculative map of
would evaporate much more water than it receives, and
50,000 years ago
would evaporate down to two large lakes, one on the
Balearic Abyssal Plain, the other further east.
The east lake would receive most of the incoming river water, and may have overflowed into the
west lake.
All or some of this seabed may have had a human population, where it was watered from the
incoming rivers.
There is a long deep submerged valley running from the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic.
(Modern research has shown that Wells' theory is incorrect. All the geological and plant-fossil
evidence shows that the Mediterranean did not dry out during the last ice age. Sea levels were
120 m (390 ft) lower than today, resulting in a shallower Strait of Gibraltar and a reduced water
exchange with the Atlantic, but there was no cut-off.[54])
Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa,[55] was a gigantic engineering and colonization project devised
by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s and promulgated by him until his death in 1952. Its
central feature was a hydroelectric dam to be built across the Strait of Gibraltar,[56] and the lowering of
the surface of the Mediterranean Sea by up to 200 metres (660 ft). Similar projects have appeared in
fiction.
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story "Gibraltar Falls" (1975) takes place while the Atlantic begins to fill
the Mediterranean Sea; here "falls" means "waterfall".
Harry Turtledove's novella "Down in the Bottomlands" takes place on an alternate Earth where the
Mediterranean Sea stayed empty, and void of water, and part of it is a national park to the countries
around it, none of which are nations that we are familiar with in the real world.
The episode "The Vanished Sea" of the Animal Planet/ORF/ZDF-produced television series The Future
Is Wild posits a world 5 million years in the future where the Mediterranean Basin has again dried up,
and explores what kind of life could survive the new climate.
Julian May's 1980s science fiction books The Many Colored Land and The Golden Torc are set in Europe
just before and during the rupture at Gibraltar. The rupture and the rapid filling of the Mediterranean
form a Wagnerian climax to The Golden Torc, in which aliens and time-traveling humans are caught up
in the cataclysm.
The Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron chronicles the adventures of Ricardo, a
modern earth man, sent into the past, where he discovers an entire civilization at the bottom of the dry
Mediterranean.
Wolfgang Jeschke's time-travel novel, The Last Day of Creation, happens 5 million years ago, while the
Mediterranean bed was dry.

References
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(1996). "A new chronology for the middle to late Miocene continental record in Spain". Earth and Planetary Science
Letters. 142 (3-4): 367–380. Bibcode:1996E&PSL.142..367K(http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996E&PSL.142..367K) .
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Further reading
Kenneth J. Hsu. The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of the Glomar Challenger. Princeton
University Press. ISBN 0-691-02406-5.
Roveri; et al. (2008). "A high-resolution stratigraphic framework for the latest Messinian events in the
Mediterranean area" (PDF) . Stratigraphy. 5 (3–4): 323–342.

External links
 Media related to Messinian salinity crisis at Wikimedia Commons
Arizona University: Geology 212, Lecture 17: "When the Mediterranean Dried Up". (Accessed 7/16/06)

1. The Messinian Salinity Crisis by Ian West (Internet Archive copy)

2. A brief history of the Messinian on Sicily by Rob Butler. Archived
3. Messinian online

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Messinian_salinity_crisis&oldid=787213095"

Categories: Events in the geological history of Earth History of the Mediterranean Messinian
Paleogeography Regional geology

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