The Mediterranean dries up
An entire sea evaporates — and refills within years
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The Messinian salinity crisis was discovered in the 1970s through drilling that found salt layers up to two kilometres thick beneath the Mediterranean floor. An estimated six per cent of all salt in the world ocean was deposited here. The Zanclean flood that ended the crisis may have carried water at a thousand times the flow of the Amazon, raising the level by over ten metres a day. The desiccation cut deep gorges into the surrounding river valleys — the Nile has a buried canyon beneath Cairo deeper than the Grand Canyon.
For children
When the Strait of Gibraltar closed, the Mediterranean had no connection to the Atlantic. The Sun evaporated it within a few thousand years, leaving a desert kilometres below sea level, floored with salt. When the strait reopened, water poured in and refilled the whole sea in perhaps only a few years.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org