The Zanclean flood (also known as "Zanclean Deluge") is a flood
theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million
years ago, at the beginning of the Zanclean age, between the
Miocene and Pliocene, which ended the Messinian salinity crisis.
The term was coined by Maria Bianca Cita in 1972 during the Deep
Sea Drilling Project study which investigated specifically the
transition between the Messinian and Zanclean ages in the
Mediterranean. According to this model, when water from the
Atlantic Ocean refilled the cut-off inland seas in the
Mediterranean basin that had become desiccated (see Messinian
salinity crisis), flooding occurred through the basin. A channel
opened from the Atlantic Ocean, through the modern-day Gibraltar
Strait, and carried ocean water over a distance of over 200 km.
The Mediterranean Sea was filled over a period estimated between
several months and two years. Sea level rise in the basin may
have reached rates at times greater than ten metres per day.
Water rushed down a drop of