The hills of Sicily were 40 meters underwater during the megaflood of the earth

The mixed rock deposits found at the top of the hills in southeast Sicily were left by the megaflood which filled the Mediterranean Sea 5 million years – the largest known flood event in the history of the earth.

The rock deposits and the hills eroded in this part of Sicily, a region of Italy, are the first terrestrial evidence found for the Megaflood, said Paul Carling at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. “You can really walk and see it,” says Carling.

About 6 million years ago, during the so-called Messinian salinity crisis, the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic Ocean and began to dry. Vast deposits of salt formed at this time and sea level may have dropped a kilometer or more.

Water Once again, started to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean about 5.3 million years ago. The researchers initially thought that a huge waterfall near Gibraltar had filled it over a period of tens of thousands of years.

But in 2009, the discovery of a huge eroded channel At the bottom of the Strait, he showed a much more abrupt megaflood. Proof of this has increased since.

This megaflood for the first time filled the Western Basin in the Mediterranean Sea, says Carling. The characteristics eroded on the seabed suggest that it then overturned the underwater crest, known as the Sicilian threshold, in the eastern basin.

Team member Giovanni Barca At the University of Catania in Italy, which grew up in southeast Sicily, suspected that the land was also shaped by the megaflood. He and his colleagues researchers therefore examined more closely and analyzed rock samples.

Indeed, they discovered that the deposits mixed near the top of certain hills contain rocks which have been eroded from much deeper layers and in a way transported to the top of the hill. “You can say by their nature that they came from these lower levels,” explains Carling. “And they were transported and on these hills.”

Many hills themselves have a rationalized shape and resemble Those in Montana which were sculpted by a massive flood caused by an ice dam that breaks at the end of the last glacial period. “They are quite distinctive,” explains Carling. “And the only thing can rationalize the characteristics of this scale is deep floods on a very large scale.”

The team estimated that during the summit of the flood, the water was around 115 kilometers per hour and covered the top of the hills – which are about 100 meters above modern sea level – with about 40 meters of water.

The researchers also studied the seabed around Sicily and found even more evidence of the megaflood, such as crests and eroded canals. Their modeling suggested that the entire Mediterranean Sea has completed between two and 16 years, but the main flood event in Sicily probably only lasted days, says Carling.