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The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Although the Mediterranean is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is usually referred to as a separate body of water. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.
In geology and geomorphology a base level is the lower limit for an erosion process. The modern term was introduced by John Wesley Powell in 1875. The term was subsequently appropriated by William Morris Davis who used it in his cycle of erosion theory. The "ultimate base level" is the plane that results from projection of the sea level under landmasses. It is to this base level that topography tends to approach due to erosion, eventually forming a peneplain close to the end of a cycle of erosion.
In geomorphology, an outburst flood—a type of megaflood—is a high-magnitude, low-frequency catastrophic flood involving the sudden release of a large quantity of water. During the last deglaciation, numerous glacial lake outburst floods were caused by the collapse of either ice sheets or glaciers that formed the dams of proglacial lakes. Examples of older outburst floods are known from the geological past of the Earth and inferred from geomorphological evidence on Mars. Landslides, lahars, and volcanic dams can also block rivers and create lakes, which trigger such floods when the rock or earthen barrier collapses or is eroded. Lakes also form behind glacial moraines or ice dams, which can collapse and create outburst floods.
The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), also referred to as the Messinian event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (drying-up) throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma. It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.
The Zanclean is the lowest stage or earliest age on the geologic time scale of the Pliocene. It spans the time between 5.332 ± 0.005 Ma and 3.6 ± 0.005 Ma. It is preceded by the Messinian Age of the Miocene Epoch, and followed by the Piacenzian Age.
In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.
The Messinian is in the geologic timescale the last age or uppermost stage of the Miocene. It spans the time between 7.246 ± 0.005 Ma and 5.333 ± 0.005 Ma. It follows the Tortonian and is followed by the Zanclean, the first age of the Pliocene.
Nuralagus is an extinct genus of leporid, with a single species, N. rex, described in 2011. It lived on Menorca, one of the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean during the Pliocene epoch. It is the largest known lagomorph to have ever existed, with an estimated weight of 12 kilograms, although some breeds of domestic rabbit, such as the Flemish Giant rabbit, approach it in size. It likely went extinct at the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition when Mallorca and Menorca were united as one island, letting the mammalian fauna of Mallorca, including the goat-like ungulate Myotragus balearicus, colonize Nuralagus's habitat.
The Paratethys sea, Paratethys ocean, Paratethys realm or just Paratethys was a large shallow inland sea that stretched from the region north of the Alps over Central Europe to the Aral Sea in Central Asia.
The Camarinal Sill is the sill separating the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This threshold is the shallowest seafloor pass between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. It is located approximately 25 km west of the narrowest section of the Strait of Gibraltar and 20 km east of the Espartel Sill, at 35°56′N5°45′W, at an elevation of −280 m.
Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa, was a gigantic engineering and colonisation idea that was devised by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s, and promoted by him until his death in 1952. The project was devised to contain several hydroelectric dams in key points of the Mediterranean Sea, such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus, to cause a sea level drop and create new land to settle.
The Betic Corridor, or North-Betic Strait, was a strait of water connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean that once separated the Iberian plate from the Eurasian plate through the Betic Cordillera. Its closure approximately 5.96 million years ago during the Messinian period of the Miocene epoch, precipitated the Messinian Salinity Crisis, a period when the Mediterranean Sea evaporated partly or completely.
The Messinian Erosional Crisis is a phase in the Messinian evolution of the central Mediterranean basin resulting from major drawdown of the Mediterranean seawater.
Overdeepening is a characteristic of basins and valleys eroded by glaciers. An overdeepened valley profile is often eroded to depths which are hundreds of metres below the deepest continuous line along a valley or watercourse. This phenomenon is observed under modern day glaciers, in salt-water fjords and fresh-water lakes remaining after glaciers melt, as well as in tunnel valleys which are partially or totally filled with sediment. When the channel produced by a glacier is filled with debris, the subsurface geomorphic structure is found to be erosionally cut into bedrock and subsequently filled by sediments. These overdeepened cuts into bedrock structures can reach a depth of several hundred metres below the valley floor.
Erodability is the inherent yielding or nonresistance of soils and rocks to erosion. A high erodability implies that the same amount of work exerted by the erosion processes leads to a larger removal of material. Because the mechanics behind erosion depend upon the competence and coherence of the material, erodability is treated in different ways depending on the type of surface that eroded.
An aquatic sill is a sea floor barrier of relatively shallow depth that restricts water movement between benthic zones of an oceanic basin or lake bottom. There are roughly 400 sills in the Earth's oceans, covering 0.01% of the seafloor. A classic example is the Strait of Gibraltar Gateway between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Zanclean flood or Zanclean deluge is a flood theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago. This flooding ended the Messinian salinity crisis and reconnected the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, although it is possible that even before the flood there were partial connections to the Atlantic Ocean. The reconnection marks the beginning of the Zanclean age.
Nature's 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal Nature. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad. Reporters and editorial staff at Nature judge nominees to have had "a significant impact on the world, or their position in the world may have had an important impact on science". Short biographical profiles describe the people behind some of the year's most important discoveries and events. Alongside the ten, five "ones to watch" for the following year are also listed.
The paleogeography of the India–Asia collision system is the reconstructed geological and geomorphological evolution within the collision zone of the Himalayan orogenic belt. The continental collision between the Indian and Eurasian plate is one of the world's most renowned and most studied convergent systems. However, many mechanisms remain controversial. Some of the highly debated issues include the onset timing of continental collision, the time at which the Tibetan plateau reached its present elevation and how tectonic processes interacted with other geological mechanisms. These mechanisms are crucial for the understanding of Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonic evolution, paleoclimate and paleontology, such as the interaction between the Himalayas orogenic growth and the Asian monsoon system, as well as the dispersal and speciation of fauna. Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain how the paleogeography of the collision system could have developed. Important ideas include the synchronous collision hypothesis, the Lhasa-plano hypothesis and the southward draining of major river systems.
Earth system interactions across mountain belts are interactions between processes occurring in the different systems or "spheres" of the Earth, as these influence and respond to each other through time. Earth system interactions involve processes occurring at the atomic to planetary scale which create linear and non-linear feedback(s) involving multiple Earth systems. This complexity makes modelling Earth system interactions difficult because it can be unclear how processes of different scales within the Earth interact to produce larger scale processes which collectively represent the dynamics of the Earth as an intricate interactive adaptive system.
References
- ↑ Editorial (2009). "Making the paper: Daniel Garcia-Castellanos". Nature. 462 (7274): 697. Bibcode:2009Natur.462Q.697.. doi: 10.1038/7274697a . ISSN 0028-0836.. Pdf available
- ↑ Garcia-Castellanos, D.; Villaseñor, A. (2011). "Messinian salinity crisis regulated by competing tectonics and erosion at the Gibraltar arc". Nature. 480 (7377): 359–363. Bibcode:2011Natur.480..359G. doi:10.1038/nature10651. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 22170684. S2CID 205227033.
- ↑ "BBC: Ancient Med flood mystery solved". 2009-12-09. Retrieved 2018-10-08.
- ↑ Kornei, Katherine. "A Megaflood-Powered Mile-High Waterfall Refilled the Mediterranean [Video]". Scientific American. Retrieved 2018-10-08.
- ↑ "Fundación J. García-Siñeriz".
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