Geologists from Utrecht, London and Granada have found the first direct proof of the largest known mega-flood that ever occurred on earth. This mega-flood ended what is known as the ' Messinian Salinity Crisis' , a period around six million years ago when the water level in the Mediterranean Sea sank by around 1.5 km, causing an extreme environmental crisis in the region. The authors studied sandstone that was exposed along the southern coast of Sicily and concluded that it was formed by a powerful flow from the western Mediterranean Sea towards the east. The water flowed over a barrier that separated what were then isolated basins in the western and eastern Mediterranean region. Their research was recently published in the journal Sedimentology . The waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean flow back and forth and mix via the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. During the Messinian era, around six million years ago, this flow was disrupted by a tectonic closure of the straits.
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