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Mediterranean Might Have Filled In Months

Posted by kdawson on from the white-water-to-die-for dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new model suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was filled in a gigantic flood some 5.3 million years ago. According to Daniel Garcia-Castellanos' paper in Nature, the sill at the Straight of Gibraltar gave way rather suddenly, with 40 cm of rock eroding and the water level rising by 10 m per day at its peak. They imagine a shallow, fast-moving stream of water (around 100 km/hr) several kilometers wide pouring into the basin with a flow greater than a thousand Amazon rivers — that's about 100,000,000 cubic meters per second." The flood would have dropped worldwide sea levels by 9.5 meters, probably triggering climate changes. In this model the Mediterranean filled in anywhere from a few months to two years at the outside.

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Roland Emmerich by assemblerex · · Score: 5, Funny

    just had an orgasm.

    1. Re:Roland Emmerich by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      And that filled the Mediterrean? Might explain the water quality...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Re:5 million? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Me personally, I would have *loved* to have been born BC. That way, we count down our age, and your friends would greet you with, 'You're looking younger; how *do* you manage it' with each birthday!