Wednesday, March 14, 2007

HOW DID THE RED SEA FORM ?


Would be a great thing to know about our blue planet where we live on and about its nature, specially the oceans and the seas. Egypt got a long coast lies to one of the most beautiful seas all over the world. The Red sea has passed several geological and major changes which made it appear like it is now. Did you know that one day the Red sea level was much higher than its level now by approximately 120 meters?...... Strange but true. In fact the Red sea started to form since some millions of years. This was found as a crack in the earth's crust maybe around 180 millions of years ago between the continents (Africa & Asia) , but have been established like it is now in the Oligocene approximately 40 million years ago. Some time during the formation it was covered with water but often the land was dry. About 5 million years ago at the end of the Miocene period when a great change occur made all the water evaporated from the sea (this explains why the Red sea is having a high percentage of salt). At this time the Red sea was not connected to the Indian Ocean like it is now. It has had this water from the ancient Mediterranean sea by some channels (where they dug sues canal), when another environmental upheaval in this area closed the connection between Red sea and the Mediterranean. But later the Indian Ocean broke the narrow neck which was blocking the Red sea (Bab el-Mandab straits which now rich around 120-80 meters depth) bringing the first indo-pacific faunas (fish-primitive animal-algae...etc) and corals which started to grow in shallow water. Later on, came the ice age (in the Pleistocene period) which made the water start to be locked up in the polar (the ice bergs) which made the sea level drops a bite more than 100 meters. At this time it could have been isolated again from the Indian Ocean but 15,000 years ago the last glaciations ended and so water melted again from the polar and raised to flood the Red sea basin with warm water. The red sea reached its level only 5,000 years ago which means that the corals growing in the red sea are very young. Some corals

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