The Flood of the Epoch!

The flood that created the Mediterranean Sea has been reanalyzed using bore holes and seismic information. Science News is reporting that evidence suggests that, rather than taking over a decade to fill, the sea flooded in less than two years. Lisa Grossman writes:

“In an instantaneous flash, the dry Mediterranean became a normal Mediterranean like we see it today,” says lead author Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Barcelona.

He and his colleagues calculate that at the height of the flood, water levels rose more than 10 meters and more than 40 centimeters of rock eroded away per day. The model also shows that 100 million cubic meters of water flowed through the channel per second, with water gushing at speeds of 100 kilometers an hour. Rather than a Niagara Falls-esque cascade from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, the team’s results imply a torrent several kilometers wide at a fairly gradual slope.

The flood is dated to around 5.3 million years ago, which would mean that if it were the flood of Noah, then Noah and his kind were late Miocene apes. Somehow, I don't think this to be the case. Ryan and Pitman are, for the moment, safe.

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