(Web Desk) - New research makes a bold claim about a very familiar body of water on the map. The Red Sea, now a long ribbon between Africa and Arabia, completely dried out approximately 6.2 million years ago.
Then, almost as suddenly, water levels returned to normal.
The team pinned this event to a short window when water from the Indian Ocean surged north and restored normal marine conditions in under 100,000 years.
The new paper also identifies a submarine canyon about 200 miles long that marks the path of the flood.
“Our findings show that the Red Sea basin records one of the most extreme environmental events on Earth, when it dried out completely and was then suddenly reflooded about 6.2 million years ago,” said Dr. Tihana Pensa from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
“The flood transformed the basin, restored marine conditions, and established the Red Sea’s lasting connection to the Indian Ocean,” Dr. Pensa continued.
For context, desiccation means a basin loses almost all standing water because evaporation outpaces inflow.
In the Red Sea, that happened when connections to other oceans were cut and climate conditions pushed salinity and evaporation sky high.
The refilling surge entered through today’s Bab-el-Mandab, crossing volcanic highs near the Hanish Islands.
Bathymetric maps show a deep, straight channel that links the Gulf of Aden to the southern Red Sea.
That channel is the kind of scar that fast-moving water leaves on a seafloor.
It implies a short, powerful event that carried enough energy to slice through volcanic barriers and drown earlier salt flats.
This sequence matters because it happened before the famous refilling of the Mediterranean at the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
The Mediterranean’s Zanclean flood is dated to about 5.33 million years ago; roughly one million years prior to the evaporation and reflooding of the Red Sea.