The Mediterranean Basin is a depression in the Earth's crust caused by the African Plate slipping under the Eurasian Plate. Typically in geologic history the depression is filled with sea water under various geologic names such as Tethys Sea. In the last period of the Miocene Epoch, the Messinian (7–5 mya), the Messinian salinity crisis, a near drying of the Mediterranean, was caused by the sea level dropping below the sill at the Strait of Gibraltar and the equilibrium between evaporation and replenishment shifting in favor of evaporation.