The book of Exodus tells of the miraculous parting of the Red Sea that allowed Moses and the Israelites to escape from Egypt. Science now knows that the Red Sea completely dried up about 6.2 million years ago.
Thousands of years later, the arid ocean floor filled with a cataclysmic flood that may have carved a submarine canyon nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) long into the Red Sea floor.
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The Red Sea began to form 30 million years ago as the African and Arabian tectonic plates pulled apart or rifted. Until the Mediterranean Sea was flooded 23 million years ago, it was a deep valley dotted with lakes. However, 6 million years ago, the Red Sea underwent a 640,000-year “salinity crisis.” Sea levels fell and salt levels soared, resulting in salt deposits up to 1.2 miles (2 km) deep in some places. Marine life has died.
Now, new research into the ocean floor reveals that the Red Sea will completely dry up during this crisis, turning into a dry, salty desert. This barren era ended with flooding from the Indian Ocean, breaching the volcanic ridge that separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden, Pensa and her colleagues published on August 9 in Communications Earth & Environment.
The researchers combined data about the rock layers beneath the Red Sea with seismic data that can delimit layers of sediment and salt throughout the ocean’s history. They found an unconformity on the ocean floor. This is where older, tilted sedimentary layers are suddenly covered by horizontal layers of rock. The consistency of this layer indicates that the entire ocean dried up during this period.
To date, researchers have tracked changes in radioactive strontium in the ocean at a known rate. They also studied microfossils that barely existed between 14 million and 6.2 million years ago, when the Red Sea was either very salty or completely dry. Fossils of marine creatures such as sea snails and bivalves returned 6.2 million years ago.
Researchers claim that water and life returned because the Indian Ocean broke through the Gulf of Aden volcano and Captain’s Ridge, known as the Hanish Threshold.
This happened quickly, less than 100,000 years ago, and may have been powerful enough to scour the 200-mile-long 5-mile (8 km) submarine canyon that still runs today from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea.
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