5 Million Years Ago, a Catastrophic Flood Submerged This Stunning Mediterranean Island

This will surely not have escaped you, but the Earth, as it is today, was not formed that way. No, our continents, our countries, our lakes, our rivers, our mountains… All of this is the fruit of a long and slow evolution. If you look at Sicily today, it's hard to imagine that more than 5 million years ago the entire island was submerged underwater. And yet, it is the case.

The dried up Mediterranean

Before experiencing one of the most important floods in the history of the Earth, if not the most important, we must imagine something that seems improbable to us today: the dry Mediterranean Sea.

To do this, we must go back 5.97 million years to the event known as the Messinian salinity crisis. This refers to the period when the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic and began to dry out. Even more, the expanse of water separating Europe from Africa had been transformed into “a gigantic salt basin” explained the CNRS in November 2024.

Then the water came back… suddenly. While early estimates thought it was several tens of thousands of years old.

The sudden return of water

How long do you think it would take to fill the Mediterranean if it experienced such an event again and emptied to 70%? 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 years? This is what scientists studying the Messinian salinity crisis thought.

However, according to new simulations, it took much, much less time.

How much ?

Barely enough time to be an adult in France. Indeed, according to the results of a study published on December 28, 2024 in the journal Communications earth & environment70% of the Mediterranean would have refilled between 2 and 16 years. The liquid essential to the development of life would have flowed at a speed of 115 km/h.

Sicily submerged

Obviously when the equivalent of 70% of a sea flows in a very short time, we can expect the quantity of water arriving to be truly massive. So, 5.33 million years ago, water returned to the Mediterranean.

And in such a brutal way that it overwhelmed Sicily. There is talk of a mega flood which plunged the Italian island underwater. So much so that its highest peaks were found 40 meters under the sea. A brutal mega flood which lasted only a few days however, but enough to shape the landscape of the island according to scientists.

Evidence of this is found in particular in the hills which show traces of the passage of water at their highest level. A phenomenon which, according to Paul Carling, co-author of the study, resembles that of the hills of Montana in the United States which found themselves underwater after an ice dam broke at the end of the ice age.

“Most of the hills themselves have an aerodynamic shape. And the only thing that can rationalize such features on this scale is deep flooding on a very large scale.” reports New Scientist.

Source : New Scientist