Nature
PUBLISHED
Like all beautiful things, the Mediterranean Sea isn’t going to be around forever. As two of Earth’s great tectonic plates crash together in super slow motion, there's a strong chance the Mediterranean Sea could be literally wiped off the face of the planet in the distant future.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The continents of our planet are in a constant (albeit very slow) state of flux. Earth’s crust is divided into tectonic plates that move over the semi-fluid upper mantle, leading to the gradual rearrangement of continents and the formation of diverse geological features over eons.
Earth’s current arrangement of continents—Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and so on—is only temporary. Continental configurations have changed drastically in the past and will continue to evolve in the future due to the movement of tectonic plates.
The major threat to the Mediterranean Sea is the gradual collision of the African (Nubian) plate into the Eurasian plate. Beginning some 100 million years ago, these two plates began converging, gradually closing the ocean basins between them. The Alps Mountain range in Europe is itself a result of this clash.
Rest assured that these geological changes operate on a timescale of millions upon millions of years, so the rate of movement is mere millimeters per Earth. Eventually, though, the Mediterranean Sea may become sandwiched between the two plates in the midst of a new supercontinent forming. Europe, as we know it, would slip beneath the African plate and the sea would cease to exist.
This is just one possible projection of how Earth’s tectonic plates are likely to shift. After all, predicting the configuration of future supercontinents is tricky due to the complex and dynamic nature of plate tectonics, as well as the vast time frames involved.
However, history has shown us that the Mediterranean Sea is in a very precarious position. Around 5.97 million years ago, an event called the Messinian salinity crisis occurred whereby the Mediterranean Sea turned into a vast salty basin for around half a million years.
An upset in sea levels made it impossible for the Atlantic Ocean to flow into the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar, cutting it off from its vital water supply. The Mediterranean region was especially vulnerable to these changes because it's found in a relatively warm and dry pocket of the planet, causing its seawater to evaporate at a very fast pace.
The good news is that the Mediterranean Sea isn’t likely to disappear for many millions of years, so there’s no need to rush to book your next holiday.
Assuming we dodge the ever-mounting risks of nuclear war, cataclysmic natural diseases, climate change, and global disease outbreaks, there's some chance that Homo sapiens will be around the witness the potential collapse of the Mediterranean in millions of years to come, although there is no certainty.
