An Amazing Ancient Flood! How the Mediterranean Sea Started

The lights of cities around the Mediterranean Sea at night

About the Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia (Turkey), on the south by North Africa (Egypt, Libya etc.), on the east by the Levant (Israel, Lebanon etc.) in West Asia, and on the west almost by the Morocco–Spain border.  Wikipedia

Average depth: 1,500 m (4,900 ft)

Max. depth: 5,109 m (16,762 ft)

Area: 2.5 million km²

Location: Southern Europe; North Africa; West Asia

Scientists think that the sea was last filled about 5.3 million years ago in less than two years by the what scientists call the "Zanclean flood". Water poured in from the Atlantic Ocean (see the map above) through a newly broken narrow area now called the Strait of Gibraltar at an estimated rate one thousand times larger than today's flow of the Amazon River! 

To understand how big the flood that made the Mediterranean was, let's find out about how big the Amazon River is:

The Amazon River in South America is by far the largest river by discharge volume of water (water that enters the ocean) in the world, and the longest or second-longest river system in the world; the River Nile in Africa may be longer, but the amount of water the Nile pours into the sea is much smaller.

Length: 6,400 km

Mouth: Atlantic Ocean

Discharge: 209,000 m³/s (cubic meters per second)

So if the Amazon pours 209,000 m³/s of water into the Atlantic Ocean, and the Zanclean flood was 1,000 times larger when it created the Mediterranean Sea, then that means that the Mediterranean filled at the rate of 209,000,000 m³/s, or about 1 cubic KILOMETER every 5 seconds!

This video shows us what the flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea millions of years ago might have looked like.

Link to Wikipedia article on the Mediterranean Sea