Do you know the story of Moses and the Red Sea that divides to allow him and his people to pass while fleeing from Egypt? Here: a long time before that episode, it happened in the Red Sea Really something sensational, an event that a group of researchers defined: «One of the most extreme from an environmental point of view ever to have happened on Earth».
What are we talking about? When the Red Sea completely emptied, turning into a salt desert, before being quickly filled again thanks to the waters of the Indian Ocean. What until now was only a hypothesis is now confirmed by a study published in Communications Earth & Environment.
A fifty year long debate. The study begins by explaining that the question of the emptying of the seas about 6 million years ago has been debated for over fifty years. We know for sure that, during what was called the Messinian salinity crisis, the Mediterranean Sea emptied almost completely for a relatively short period that went from 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago. Our sea filled again thanks to the Zanclean flood, which reopened the Strait of Gibraltar and brought the waters of the Atlantic back into the basin.
What does the Red Sea have to do with it? It has something to do with it because at the time it was not connected to the Indian Ocean but to the Mediterranean Sea, and 6.2 million years ago (before, therefore, the Mediterranean itself) it began to empty.
This is because the connection between our sea and the Red Sea was represented by a shallow arm of the sea, which was the first to become blocked with the drop in water levels. Within about 100,000 years, the Red Sea was completely dry.
A short-lived desert. However, the salt desert that had become the Red Sea did not last long. If the link with the Mediterranean had been severed, in fact, the waters of the Indian Ocean managed, again 6.2 million years ago, to overcome the volcanic barrier that separated them from the Red Sea, starting to fill it again. It took less than 100,000 years, and the Red Sea returned to “itself” about a million years before the Mediterranean filled again.
One of the most evident proofs of this last event is the enormous underwater canyon dug by the waters of the Indian Ocean on what is now the bottom of the Red Sea: 320 km of underwater scar which testifies to how rapidly the waters of the Indian Ocean filled the newly emptied basin.
With the return of the waters, life also returned: since then the Red Sea has the appearance (and the water…) that we know.
