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A Short Note On The Salinity Crisis And Its Effects On The Sea

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The Messinian Salinity Crisis, most commonly referred to as MSC, is considered to be one of the most dramatic events to occur in the geology of the world in about twenty million years. The Messinian Salinity Crisis is essentially when the Mediterranean Sea dried up completely. The sea began to dry up approximately 6 million years ago and ended around 5.3 million years ago. Prior to the drying of the sea, the sea level in the oceans had dropped about 70 meters because of global cooling which led to the glaciers and icebergs. Because of this, the connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea had become nonexistent and the Mediterranean could not depend on the Atlantic for the source of water. With the Mediterranean Sea being…show more content…
The two types of salts that were deposited on the floor were Halite and Gypsum. Some of the salt deposits were as deep as 800 meters which is equivalent to 2,500 feet. The scientists were baffled by this discovery, thus leading to numerous investigations about where these salt deposits came from. Some of the scientists believe that environmental changes like the Mediterranean Salinity Crisis, could quite possibly have a larger affect than what is assumed. Scientist believe that it could having an impact on the global level.
The Mediterranean Salinity Crisis is said to have occurred in three stages. The first stage was when the, “evaporites precipitated in shallow sub-basins.” Basically, this is when natural salt build us in the sub-basin after the evaporation of a body of water. During the second stage, “evaporite precipitation is shifted to the deepest depocentres.” Essentially all of the salts moved to the bottom of the basin. This is what the oil drillers were drilling into when they discovered the large salt deposits at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The third stage is considered to be the “large-scale environmental fluctuations in the Mediterranean transformed into brackish water lake.” The idea behind this stage is that it basically the erosion that occurred after all of the water was gone. This erosion then led to the breaking of the barrier between the basin and the Atlantic Ocean. The
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