The Mediterranean was filled with “salt giants” 6 million years ago

He Mediterranean Sea suffered a salinity crisis 6 million years ago that led to the evaporation of one million cubic meters of water, which caused its isolation with respect to the Atlantic Ocean and the creation of mountains or “great giants” of salt that occupied kilometers of distance.

This follows from an international investigation in which the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Italy (INGV) has participated, published this Thursday in the prestigious scientific journal ‘Nature’ and that reveals the details about the process of drying of the basin and what this meant at a climatic and geological level.

The so-called “Messina salinity crisis” It has its origin in the movements of tectonic plates that caused in ancient times the opening and closing of oceans that, in the case of the Mediterranean, ended up isolating it from the Atlantic.

When the exit to the ocean was closed, large deposits of evaporites accumulated, large saline blocks that are produced when seas and oceans dry, and which in the study were named “salt giants””.

“These huge evaporite deposits formed episodically in Earth’s history and had a significant impact on the carbon cycle and global climate.”explained Fabio Florindo, INGV researcher and co-author of the study, in a statement.

The “salt giants” They emerged after the evaporation of more than a million cubic meters of water, which gave rise to formations of gypsum and halite deposits kilometers long.

These formations “influenced the chemical composition of the oceans and the global climate balance”, since the elimination of calcium caused, among other phenomena, an increase in the pH of the water, a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and a cooling of the planet.

The Messina salinity crisis ended, according to research, 5.3 million years ago, when there was a massive flooding of the Atlantic Ocean that scientists know as the “Zanclean Event”which in turn returned its marine status to the Mediterranean basin.

“This study offers an important window into the geological past of the Mediterranean and the evolution of our planet, offering valuable information to better understand the climatic and environmental processes that have shaped the Earth over millennia,” concludes the INGV.

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