Nuralagus rex: Giant extinct rabbit that didn't hop

Oldest fossil 'rabbit' unearthed (55 million years ago) [01/01/2023]

That Time the Mediterranean Sea Disappeared | PBS Eons
2.45M subscribers | 4,171,013 views | January 9, 2020

Transcript
0:01 In 2011, paleontologists working on the Spanish island of Minorca announced the discovery
0:06 of some very odd fossils.
0:09 They were the bones of a rabbit, but it wasn’t like any rabbit you’ve ever seen.
0:13 For one thing, this bunny was a giant, up to six times heavier than your average cottontail.
0:19 It also had short hindlimbs, compared to its forelimbs, and feet that were tipped with
0:23 claws.
0:24 And this rabbit almost certainly couldn’t hop.
0:26 It had a stiff spine and splayed toes - very different from the flexible spines and tightly
0:32 packed toes of living rabbits.
0:33 The scientists named this huge bunny Nuralagus rex -- “the Rabbit King of Minorca” -- and
0:39 they determined that it ruled its island kingdom during the Pliocene Epoch, from about 5 million
0:44 to 3 million years ago.
0:45 Now, we’ve talked before about insular gigantism, where small animals that become isolated on
0:50 islands evolve into larger forms due to a lack of predators.
0:54 And that seems to be what allowed Nuralagus rex to get so big.
0:58 But how did the normal-sized ancestor of Nuralagus make it onto a Mediterranean island in the
1:03 first place?
1:04 Well, it looks like the answer to this biological mystery is actually wrapped up in an even
1:09 older geological mystery.
1:10 Since the 1800s, scientists have known that the layers under the floor of the Mediterranean
1:15 Sea weren’t just made up of the usual sediments, like mud and sand.
1:19 Instead, they’re full of salt crystals -- lots and lots of salt -- forming mega-deposits
1:25 so large that they’re sometimes called the Mediterranean Salt Giant.
1:29 And salt deposits like these are typically found in places where bodies of water have
1:33 dried up.
1:34 So the existence of this Salt Giant suggests that, at one point in history, the Mediterranean
1:39 Sea must have evaporated.
1:40 But how could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just...disappear?
1:46 It would take decades and more than 1,000 research studies to even start to figure out
1:51 the cause -- or causes -- of one of the greatest vanishing acts in Earth’s history.
1:58 Today, ocean water flows into the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic through a narrow passage
2:04 between Europe and Africa, called the Strait of Gibraltar.
2:07 And that’s the main source of water for the Sea.
2:10 Some freshwater in the form of rainfall and rivers also flows into it, but that’s not
2:14 enough to keep the Sea filled up without the water from the Atlantic, because it has very
2:19 high rates of evaporation.
2:21 So, to the geologists who were trying to explain the existence of the Salt Giant, it looked
2:26 like the main water source to the Mediterranean had somehow been turned off, like turning
2:31 off a faucet in a bathtub.
2:32 They called this event the Messinian Salinity Crisis, or MSC.
2:36 But it wasn’t easy to figure out how that
2:39 water source got turned off.
2:41 And researchers have been arguing about it since the 1970s.
2:45 How did it happen?
2:46 How long did it take?
2:47 In the end, they came up with three main hypotheses to answer these questions and explain how
2:52 the salt giant got there.
2:54 First, some scientists thought there was a global cooling event at the beginning of the
2:58 crisis, in the Late Miocene Epoch around 6 million years ago.
3:02 If the whole world cooled off into an ice age, then lots of water would’ve been taken
3:06 out of the ocean and frozen in glaciers, reducing the water flow into the Mediterranean Sea
3:11 from both the Atlantic and the rivers.
3:14 An event of this magnitude would have to have been global, not local.
3:18 However, this idea was proved wrong pretty quickly.
3:22 Soon after the Salt Giant was discovered, researchers started studying oxygen isotopes
3:26 and other geochemical data from sediment and ice cores around the world.
3:30 Their data showed that the rest of the Earth wasn’t abnormally hot, cold, or dry during
3:35 the crisis.
3:36 Plus, they found that some of the salt was deposited before any changes in sea level.
3:41 So there didn’t seem to be a cooling event that was big enough to turn off the flow of
3:45 water.
3:46 That ruled out the first hypothesis.
3:48 The second idea was that tectonic events had somehow blocked the Mediterranean off from
3:52 the Atlantic, and cut off the water flow.
3:55 Some researchers thought that shifting ocean crusts slowly blocked off the waterway between
3:59 the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
4:02 As the water left behind in the deep basin evaporated, it became saltier and saltier,
4:07 depositing layers of salt as it dried.
4:09 And this explanation was *almost* right.
4:12 Other scientists thought that it might have been a combination of shifting crusts and
4:16 climate change that made the Mediterranean dry up.
4:19 This was the third hypothesis.
4:22 According to this model, the crust under the Strait of Gibraltar rose up over time, reducing
4:26 the flow of water from the Atlantic.
4:28 Then, because of changes in regional climate -- like periods of less rain and higher temperatures
4:32 -- the amount of freshwater that made it into the Mediterranean varied.
4:36 So by this thinking, the MSC didn’t happen all at once.
4:40 Instead, water levels started to drop after the strait closed, and then fluctuated according
4:45 to changes in the climate.
4:46 And this hypothesis ended up being … pretty much right!
4:50 Or at least close to it.
4:52 As geologists began collecting evidence to test these hypotheses, they eventually found
4:56 that the MSC was indeed caused by changes in Earth’s crust, but those shifts actually
5:01 happened repeatedly, not just in one fell swoop.
5:04 For example, in sediments near the Nile, geologists found evidence of repeated erosion events,
5:09 not just a single big erosion.
5:12 This meant that the water level dropped, created a new shoreline for a bit, and then dropped
5:16 again a few more times.
5:18 Some researchers estimate that there were 16 climate cycles just in the beginning of
5:22 the MSC.
5:23 And these changes also correlated pretty closely with what we know about climate cycles.
5:28 During periods of decreasing sea level, the position and angle of the Earth changed with
5:33 respect to the Sun, so there were periods of lower solar energy, and others of higher
5:38 solar energy, which increased evaporation rates in the Mediterranean.
5:42 At the same time, an actively folding and uplifting tectonic belt caused water input
5:47 to decrease.
5:48 Researchers were able to use chemical, and even magnetic, signatures in the sediments
5:52 laid down during this time to estimate how long the MSC lasted.
5:56 And the data suggest that it went on for over 600,000 years, with the very driest period
6:02 occurring about 5.6 million years ago!
6:04 At the height of the MSC, external water sources were completely cut off, and most of the water
6:10 left behind in the Mediterranean basin was evaporating.
6:13 Geologists think the water level dropped by a few hundred meters -- the length of multiple
6:18 American football fields.
6:19 And the water that was left was supersaturated, so the salt continued to precipitate out at
6:25 the bottom of the Sea.
6:26 The longer there was salty water that could precipitate out salt, the thicker the final
6:30 deposits became.
6:31 And the salt giant is possibly up to 3 kilometers thick, which means that the sea was extremely
6:37 salty for the hundreds of thousands of years during the MSC.
6:41 And this, of course, had enormous effects on living things in and around the Mediterranean.
6:46 Back then, life in the sea was dramatically different.
6:49 Today the Mediterranean Sea is home to thousands of marine species and is famous for its crystal
6:54 blue water.
6:55 But when the sea almost dried up completely, it became uninhabitable.
6:59 Almost nothing could live there.
7:00 Most of the animals and plants that lived in the Mediterranean before the MSC either
7:04 migrated away or died because the water was too salty and too shallow.
7:09 Some marine paleontologists think that no true marine organism was able to survive,
7:13 and the evidence for that is pretty good.
7:16 For one thing, the sediments that were deposited during this period weren’t disturbed, which
7:20 suggests that there were no burrowing creatures living there.
7:23 And even now, there are hardly any deep sea animals that are unique to the Mediterranean,
7:28 because all of them died during the MSC.
7:31 Some shelled creatures, like gastropods, might have survived, though they weren’t exactly
7:35 thriving.
7:37 Sediment cores showed that small populations may have eked out a living in isolated pockets.
7:41 But the disappearance of the sea wasn’t all bad news for living things; the lower water
7:47 levels were also an opportunity for some creatures to flourish.
7:50 The distribution of fossils of now-extinct megafauna suggests that there was once a land
7:55 bridge between the mainland and several Mediterranean islands, like Sardinia and Corsica, that has
8:00 now disappeared.
8:02 This allowed hippos, elephants, and other megafauna from Africa to walk and swim across
8:07 the Mediterranean.
8:08 And we know that it wasn’t just megafauna that took advantage of the crisis to move
8:12 around.
8:13 This seems to be when the ancestors of our giant friend, Nuralagus, left the European
8:18 mainland for Minorca.
8:20 Paleontologists have found other giant fauna, like dormice and hamsters, on islands that
8:25 haven’t been connected to each other since the MSC, like Malta and Sicily.
8:29 This wasn’t the first time that animals made a long journey to lands around the sea
8:33 -- it was just one of several migration events during the late Miocene.
8:37 The remnants of these migrations are found in the fossilized remains of the hippos and
8:41 elephants that lived there.
8:42 But when the water rose back up at the end of the MSC and land bridges disappeared, the
8:47 populations were isolated from each other, and from northern Africa.
8:50 That isolation led to small versions of large animals, or insular dwarfism, and large versions
8:55 of small animals, or insular gigantism, on islands around the Mediterranean.
9:00 Which solves the mystery of how Nuralagus got to Minorca and why it ended up being so
9:05 big.
9:06 The Mediterranean Sea is back again, of course, so obviously the water returned at some point.
9:10 Models of the ocean crust suggest that the Strait of Gibraltar opened up as the tectonic
9:14 plates shifted again and sediments eroded, lowering the barrier between the Atlantic
9:19 and Mediterranean, letting water flow through the Strait, and into the basin.
9:24 But just like the arguments about how the MSC started, there was a lot of debate about
9:28 how it ended, too.
9:30 At first, some scientists thought that it was replenished by a giant waterfall cascading
9:35 into the Mediterranean, with water pouring so fast that it filled up in only a few months.
9:41 They even found sediment deposits that suggested a rapid flooding event occurred.
9:46 And while that sounds amazing, it looks like it’s not true --- at least, not the waterfall
9:51 part.
9:52 More recently, other geologists using seismic data discovered that the slope between the
9:56 Atlantic and the Mediterranean wasn’t steep enough for there to have been a waterfall.
10:00 Instead, what re-filled the sea was probably more like a river.
10:04 The basin did fill up quickly, though; recent estimates say it only took around 2 years
10:09 to end the MSC, during an event sometimes called the Zanclean Flood.
10:13 But that doesn’t mean this story is over.
10:15 The plates of the Earth are always shifting, and if the perfect storm of plate movement
10:19 and climate change repeated itself, it could conceivably happen again.
10:23 Scientists are still finding more evidence of the MSC, from those fossilized mini-elephants,
10:29 to Nuralagus, to salt crystals found on land and under the Mediterranean Sea.
10:34 And while some events leave obvious marks on the planet’s surface, like mountains
10:37 and craters, there are others that you have to look harder to find traces of.
10:41 Even though the MSC shaped life in and around the Mediterranean for hundreds of thousands
10:46 of years, its fingerprints lie mostly out of sight, buried beneath the waves.
10:51 But the fossils of those dwarf elephants and giant rabbits let us see its effects, and
10:55 help remind us of that moment in geological time when the Mediterranean Sea disappeared.
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Damn.

Easy on the carrots, bugs

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Did Whale Have Odd Deer-Like Ancestor? [12/20/2007]
Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy' [12/11/2007]
Dwarf hippo fossils found on Cyprus [12/05/2007]
390-million-year-old scorpion fossil -- biggest bug known [11/21/2007]
Fossil find changes evolutionary beliefs (New human fossils found in Georgia, north of Africa) [11/18/2007]
Chinese Scientists Conclude Wushan Man Is Oldest Human Fossil In China [11/16/2007]
Dinosaur Deaths Outsourced to India? [10/30/2007]
Climate change: Fossil record points to future mass extinctions [10/23/2007]
How Amber Becomes Death Trap For Watery Creatures [10/21/2007]
105-Foot Dinosaur Unearthed in Argentina [10/15/2007]
Recent Fossil Find and Human Evolution [10/07/2007]
Fossils Reveal Clues on Human Ancestor (transitional fossil alert) [09/20/2007]
Ancient Human Fossils Show Women Much Smaller [08/09/2007]
Kenyan Fossils May Add New Branch to Human Family Tree [08/08/2007]
Famous fossil Lucy leaves Ethiopia (on a U.S. tour) [08/06/2007]
Rare fossilized cypress trees found in Hungary [08/02/2007]
Ethiopia Unveils New Find Of Ancient (Hominid) Fossils [07/11/2007]
Fossil DNA Proves Greenland Once Had Lush Forests; Ice Sheet Is Surprisingly Stable [07/05/2007]
UWO Researcher Finds What May Be Oldest Fossil On Earth [05/30/2007]
Oldest lobster fossil uncovered in Mexico [05/04/2007]
Fossil Arctic animal tracks point to climate risks (hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island) [04/25/2007]
Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Coal Mine [04/23/2007]
Scientist: Frog Could Be 25M Years Old [02/14/2007]
Fossil Meat Found in 380-Million-Year-Old Fish [02/12/2007]
Mastodon Tooth Fossil Remains a Mystery [02/03/2007]
Southern Australia throws up treasure trove of fossils [01/24/2007]
Prehistoric 'two-headed Chinese dragon' revealed (Baby dino had two heads) [12/19/2006]
Tiny Bones Rewrite Texbooks: First New Zealand Land Mammal Fossil [12/15/2006]
Did The Air Belong To Mammals First? [12/13/2006]
Viral Fossil Brought Back to Life [11/07/2006]
Rare fossil find on roadside (Extraordinarily preserved pterosaur) [11/03/2006]
Scientist finds 100 million-year-old bee [10/30/2006]
New mouse find is 'living fossil' [10/12/2006]
Remains of giant camel discovered in Syria [10/08/2006]
'Monster' fossil find in Arctic (First complete pliosaur and ichthyosaur skeletons ever found) [10/05/2006]
Mastodons Driven To Extinction By Tuberculosis, Fossils Suggest [10/03/2006]
Anthropologist challenges species identification of ancient child skeleton found in Ethiopia [10/03/2006]
Ethiopia unveils 3.3 million-year-old girl fossil [09/20/2006]
'Lucy's baby' found in Ethiopia [09/20/2006]
Prehistoric puzzles - A sculptor pieces together ancient fossils [09/15/2006]
Sumatran Rhinos Are Living Fossils [09/13/2006]
Oz fossil find causes sensation (Rewriting history again) [08/31/2006]
Small Prehistoric Whale Was Vicious Hunter [08/31/2006]
Mummified Brachylophosaurus holds secrets millions of years old [08/29/2006]
Rare Discovery: Fossilized Bone Marrow is 10 Million Years Old [07/26/2006]
"Living fossil" discovered in SW China [07/21/2006]
Charcoal reveals wildfire history [07/16/2006]
'Ferocious Fossils' Found in Australia [07/14/2006]
Killer Kangaroo and 'Duck of Doom' Fossils Found [07/12/2006]
When killer kangaroos roamed the earth [07/12/2006]
Math and fossils resolve a debate on dinosaur metabolism [07/11/2006]
Scientists reopen one of world's only urban Ice Age dig sites in Los Angeles [06/30/2006]
Fossils point to oldest life on Earth [06/07/2006]
Mysterious Arctic skull raises questions about what animals once roamed North [05/30/2006]
New dinosaur found looking like dragon - named after Harry Potter dragon [05/28/2006]
French Scientists Find 'Living Fossil' [05/19/2006]
Fossil "Pompeii" of Prehistoric Animals Named U.S. Landmark [05/16/2006]
Hunting fossils and fame: Author to discuss book on scientists and competition [04/26/2006]
Fossil gives clue to big chill [04/21/2006]
The fish that crawled out of the water - A newly found fossil links fish to land-lubbers. [04/06/2006]
Fossil Fish Sheds Light on Transition [04/05/2006]
Scorpion bigger than human described [03/08/2006]
Geology Picture of the Week, March 5-11, 2006: Manticoceras (cephalopod) fossil [03/07/2006]
Evolution study tightens human-chimp connection [01/23/2006]
Scientists Find Evolution Clue in Chimp DNA [01/02/2006]
Spider Blood Found in 20 Million Year Old Fossil [10/12/2005]
Spider 'is 20 million years old' [09/30/2005]
That's a Croc ! [09/07/2005]
Chimp and human DNA is 96% identical [09/02/2005]
Not the Biggest Man on Campus, but Surely the Biggest Foot [why is a TX dinosaur track in B'klyn?] [08/20/2005]
Strange fossil defies grouping [08/18/2005]
Fossil poachers running rampant [08/07/2005]
Venomous mammal find a first: Alberta paleontologist [06/27/2005]
Prehistoric Croc Fossils Found in Brazil [06/08/2005]
Peru: Ice Age armadillos the size of cars, fossil shows [05/19/2005]
Fossil find yields new dinosaur species [05/02/2005]
A race against water [04/26/2005]
Stone Age Cutups (Deathly Rituals Emerge at Neandertal Site) [04/22/2005]
Reproductive riddle unscrambled [Fossilized eggs found inside dinosaur supports a link with birds] [04/15/2005]
Mammoth's remains found at homes' construction site(12Ft Fossil far too ancient for carbon dating) [04/11/2005]
Some See Roots of Compassion in a Toothless Fossil Skull [04/06/2005]
Ethiopia Archaeologists Make Important Fossil Find [03/05/2005]
Thai man arrested for smuggling dinosaur fossils [02/25/2005]
Ancient Crocodile Found in Australia [02/23/2005]
History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud [02/21/2005]
Oldest Remains of Modern Humans Are Identified by Scientists [02/16/2005]
Scientists Find Fossil Proof Of Egypt's Ancient Climate [02/03/2005]
Bright Idea: Ancient monster tsunami mixed fossils [02/01/2005]
Prehistoric badger had dinosaurs for breakfast [01/13/2005]
Brain Asymmetries in Chimps Resemble Those of Humans [Evolution] [12/06/2004]
Geology Pictures of the Week, November 14-20, 2004: Student Fossil Find & Eiger View [11/17/2004]
Geology Pictures of the Week, November 14-20, 2004: Student Fossil Find & Eiger View [11/17/2004]
Scientists move closer to linking embryos of the Earth's first animals to adult form [11/17/2004]
Pitt student finds new species of amphibian [11/09/2004]
Fossil Findings Blur Picture Of Art's Birth (Neanderthals?) [07/08/2004]
Giant Hippos Roamed Britain in Warmer Past [07/01/2004]
Little Hominid May Have Been Failed Experiment [07/01/2004]
Old fossils contradict explosion-of-species theory [Cambrian explosion] [06/03/2004]
Do Fossils Show a Worldwide Record of Evolution? [05/23/2004]
Fossil Hummingbird, Arthropod Look Modern [05/08/2004]
A World Ruled By Fungi [03/30/2004]
Creature Features: Fossil Hunting on Mars [03/16/2004]
Anthropologists Hail Romania Fossil Find (35K Y.O. Humans) [03/07/2004]
Tiny fossil overlooked for years is that of oldest known insect, scientists say [03/05/2004]
Another Branch of Human Ancestors Reported [03/05/2004]
'Descendents Of Dragon' Confirmed At Laiohe River Valley [02/26/2004]
Footprints Of Paleolithic Man Found On Cheju Island (Korea - 50k yo) [02/06/2004]
Neanderthal Extinction Pieced Together [01/27/2004]
Genome Comparisons Hold Clues to Human Evolution [12/13/2003]
Tiny fossil found to have the world's oldest known penis [12/04/2003]
350-Million-Year-Old Fossils Found In Pa. [11/18/2003]
Fossil Hints At Primate Origins (Out-Of-Asia?) [10/29/2003]
Potholers Uncover 35,000-Year-Old Human Jawbone [09/22/2003]
Fossil reveals world's oldest genitals [09/22/2003]
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Greater 1.4 Billion Years Ago [09/20/2003]
Ratzilla: Extinct rodent was big, really big [09/20/2003]
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Ramayana bridge [10/21/2002]
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Dino-Era Vomit Fossil Found in England [05/03/2002]
Paleontologists find Jurassic mammal fossil in South America [03/13/2002]

Puka - name is Harvey

the living European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus...
= = =

This guy is going to have to spell his name for folks, to avoid any confusion.

I was sure this was posted four years ago, but apparently not. It emerged in the related vids due to the recent Zanclean Flood discussion and searches.

The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum keyword [PETM]

Instead, this rabbit was most likely a digger,
= = =

So, the Auzzies are going to co-opt this guy as one of them, a prehistoric Roo?

They found your ancient pet from a former life, Rex the Attack Rabbit.

A victim of man made global warming.

Rabbit Montage to "Ya Wanna Buy A Bunny?" | Rapid T. Rabbit
621 subscribers | 29,474 views | October 29, 2006

He’s got huge, sharp— eh— he can leap about— look at the bones!

Giant Pooka Harvious

Oh, this rabbit isn’t extinct... it’s still around. It’s just six feet tall and invisible. I saw it in a movie.

Just like Bugs Bunny or Roger Rabbit on steroids.

Transcript
0:01	In 2011, paleontologists working on the Spanish island of Minorca announced the discovery
0:06	of some very odd fossils.
0:09	They were the bones of a rabbit, but it wasn’t like any rabbit you’ve ever seen.
0:13	For one thing, this bunny was a giant, up to six times heavier than your average cottontail.
0:19	It also had short hindlimbs, compared to its forelimbs, and feet that were tipped with
0:23	claws.
0:24	And this rabbit almost certainly couldn’t hop.
0:26	It had a stiff spine and splayed toes - very different from the flexible spines and tightly
0:32	packed toes of living rabbits.
0:33	The scientists named this huge bunny Nuralagus rex -- “the Rabbit King of Minorca” -- and
0:39	they determined that it ruled its island kingdom during the Pliocene Epoch, from about 5 million
0:44	to 3 million years ago.
0:45	Now, we’ve talked before about insular gigantism, where small animals that become isolated on
0:50	islands evolve into larger forms due to a lack of predators.
0:54	And that seems to be what allowed Nuralagus rex to get so big.
0:58	But how did the normal-sized ancestor of Nuralagus make it onto a Mediterranean island in the
1:03	first place?
1:04	Well, it looks like the answer to this biological mystery is actually wrapped up in an even
1:09	older geological mystery.
1:10	Since the 1800s, scientists have known that the layers under the floor of the Mediterranean
1:15	Sea weren’t just made up of the usual sediments, like mud and sand.
1:19	Instead, they’re full of salt crystals -- lots and lots of salt -- forming mega-deposits
1:25	so large that they’re sometimes called the Mediterranean Salt Giant.
1:29	And salt deposits like these are typically found in places where bodies of water have
1:33	dried up.
1:34	So the existence of this Salt Giant suggests that, at one point in history, the Mediterranean
1:39	Sea must have evaporated.
1:40	But how could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just...disappear?
1:46	It would take decades and more than 1,000 research studies to even start to figure out
1:51	the cause -- or causes -- of one of the greatest vanishing acts in Earth’s history.
1:58	Today, ocean water flows into the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic through a narrow passage
2:04	between Europe and Africa, called the Strait of Gibraltar.
2:07	And that’s the main source of water for the Sea.
2:10	Some freshwater in the form of rainfall and rivers also flows into it, but that’s not
2:14	enough to keep the Sea filled up without the water from the Atlantic, because it has very
2:19	high rates of evaporation.
2:21	So, to the geologists who were trying to explain the existence of the Salt Giant, it looked
2:26	like the main water source to the Mediterranean had somehow been turned off, like turning
2:31	off a faucet in a bathtub.
2:32	They called this event the Messinian Salinity Crisis, or MSC.
2:36	But it wasn’t easy to figure out how that
2:39	water source got turned off.
2:41	And researchers have been arguing about it since the 1970s.
2:45	How did it happen?
2:46	How long did it take?
2:47	In the end, they came up with three main hypotheses to answer these questions and explain how
2:52	the salt giant got there.
2:54	First, some scientists thought there was a global cooling event at the beginning of the
2:58	crisis, in the Late Miocene Epoch around 6 million years ago.
3:02	If the whole world cooled off into an ice age, then lots of water would’ve been taken
3:06	out of the ocean and frozen in glaciers, reducing the water flow into the Mediterranean Sea
3:11	from both the Atlantic and the rivers.
3:14	An event of this magnitude would have to have been global, not local.
3:18	However, this idea was proved wrong pretty quickly.
3:22	Soon after the Salt Giant was discovered, researchers started studying oxygen isotopes
3:26	and other geochemical data from sediment and ice cores around the world.
3:30	Their data showed that the rest of the Earth wasn’t abnormally hot, cold, or dry during
3:35	the crisis.
3:36	Plus, they found that some of the salt was deposited before any changes in sea level.
3:41	So there didn’t seem to be a cooling event that was big enough to turn off the flow of
3:45	water.
3:46	That ruled out the first hypothesis.
3:48	The second idea was that tectonic events had somehow blocked the Mediterranean off from
3:52	the Atlantic, and cut off the water flow.
3:55	Some researchers thought that shifting ocean crusts slowly blocked off the waterway between
3:59	the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
4:02	As the water left behind in the deep basin evaporated, it became saltier and saltier,
4:07	depositing layers of salt as it dried.
4:09	And this explanation was almost right.
4:12	Other scientists thought that it might have been a combination of shifting crusts and
4:16	climate change that made the Mediterranean dry up.
4:19	This was the third hypothesis.
4:22	According to this model, the crust under the Strait of Gibraltar rose up over time, reducing
4:26	the flow of water from the Atlantic.
4:28	Then, because of changes in regional climate -- like periods of less rain and higher temperatures
4:32	-- the amount of freshwater that made it into the Mediterranean varied.
4:36	So by this thinking, the MSC didn’t happen all at once.
4:40	Instead, water levels started to drop after the strait closed, and then fluctuated according
4:45	to changes in the climate.
4:46	And this hypothesis ended up being … pretty much right!
4:50	Or at least close to it.
4:52	As geologists began collecting evidence to test these hypotheses, they eventually found
4:56	that the MSC was indeed caused by changes in Earth’s crust, but those shifts actually
5:01	happened repeatedly, not just in one fell swoop.
5:04	For example, in sediments near the Nile, geologists found evidence of repeated erosion events,
5:09	not just a single big erosion.
5:12	This meant that the water level dropped, created a new shoreline for a bit, and then dropped
5:16	again a few more times.
5:18	Some researchers estimate that there were 16 climate cycles just in the beginning of
5:22	the MSC.
5:23	And these changes also correlated pretty closely with what we know about climate cycles.
5:28	During periods of decreasing sea level, the position and angle of the Earth changed with
5:33	respect to the Sun, so there were periods of lower solar energy, and others of higher
5:38	solar energy, which increased evaporation rates in the Mediterranean.
5:42	At the same time, an actively folding and uplifting tectonic belt caused water input
5:47	to decrease.
5:48	Researchers were able to use chemical, and even magnetic, signatures in the sediments
5:52	laid down during this time to estimate how long the MSC lasted.
5:56	And the data suggest that it went on for over 600,000 years, with the very driest period
6:02	occurring about 5.6 million years ago!
6:04	At the height of the MSC, external water sources were completely cut off, and most of the water
6:10	left behind in the Mediterranean basin was evaporating.
6:13	Geologists think the water level dropped by a few hundred meters -- the length of multiple
6:18	American football fields.
6:19	And the water that was left was supersaturated, so the salt continued to precipitate out at
6:25	the bottom of the Sea.
6:26	The longer there was salty water that could precipitate out salt, the thicker the final
6:30	deposits became.
6:31	And the salt giant is possibly up to 3 kilometers thick, which means that the sea was extremely
6:37	salty for the hundreds of thousands of years during the MSC.
6:41	And this, of course, had enormous effects on living things in and around the Mediterranean.
6:46	Back then, life in the sea was dramatically different.
6:49	Today the Mediterranean Sea is home to thousands of marine species and is famous for its crystal
6:54	blue water.
6:55	But when the sea almost dried up completely, it became uninhabitable.
6:59	Almost nothing could live there.
7:00	Most of the animals and plants that lived in the Mediterranean before the MSC either
7:04	migrated away or died because the water was too salty and too shallow.
7:09	Some marine paleontologists think that no true marine organism was able to survive,
7:13	and the evidence for that is pretty good.
7:16	For one thing, the sediments that were deposited during this period weren’t disturbed, which
7:20	suggests that there were no burrowing creatures living there.
7:23	And even now, there are hardly any deep sea animals that are unique to the Mediterranean,
7:28	because all of them died during the MSC.
7:31	Some shelled creatures, like gastropods, might have survived, though they weren’t exactly
7:35	thriving.
7:37	Sediment cores showed that small populations may have eked out a living in isolated pockets.
7:41	But the disappearance of the sea wasn’t all bad news for living things; the lower water
7:47	levels were also an opportunity for some creatures to flourish.
7:50	The distribution of fossils of now-extinct megafauna suggests that there was once a land
7:55	bridge between the mainland and several Mediterranean islands, like Sardinia and Corsica, that has
8:00	now disappeared.
8:02	This allowed hippos, elephants, and other megafauna from Africa to walk and swim across
8:07	the Mediterranean.
8:08	And we know that it wasn’t just megafauna that took advantage of the crisis to move
8:12	around.
8:13	This seems to be when the ancestors of our giant friend, Nuralagus, left the European
8:18	mainland for Minorca.
8:20	Paleontologists have found other giant fauna, like dormice and hamsters, on islands that
8:25	haven’t been connected to each other since the MSC, like Malta and Sicily.
8:29	This wasn’t the first time that animals made a long journey to lands around the sea
8:33	-- it was just one of several migration events during the late Miocene.
8:37	The remnants of these migrations are found in the fossilized remains of the hippos and
8:41	elephants that lived there.
8:42	But when the water rose back up at the end of the MSC and land bridges disappeared, the
8:47	populations were isolated from each other, and from northern Africa.
8:50	That isolation led to small versions of large animals, or insular dwarfism, and large versions
8:55	of small animals, or insular gigantism, on islands around the Mediterranean.
9:00	Which solves the mystery of how Nuralagus got to Minorca and why it ended up being so
9:05	big.
9:06	The Mediterranean Sea is back again, of course, so obviously the water returned at some point.
9:10	Models of the ocean crust suggest that the Strait of Gibraltar opened up as the tectonic
9:14	plates shifted again and sediments eroded, lowering the barrier between the Atlantic
9:19	and Mediterranean, letting water flow through the Strait, and into the basin.
9:24	But just like the arguments about how the MSC started, there was a lot of debate about
9:28	how it ended, too.
9:30	At first, some scientists thought that it was replenished by a giant waterfall cascading
9:35	into the Mediterranean, with water pouring so fast that it filled up in only a few months.
9:41	They even found sediment deposits that suggested a rapid flooding event occurred.
9:46	And while that sounds amazing, it looks like it’s not true --- at least, not the waterfall
9:51	part.
9:52	More recently, other geologists using seismic data discovered that the slope between the
9:56	Atlantic and the Mediterranean wasn’t steep enough for there to have been a waterfall.
10:00	Instead, what re-filled the sea was probably more like a river.
10:04	The basin did fill up quickly, though; recent estimates say it only took around 2 years
10:09	to end the MSC, during an event sometimes called the Zanclean Flood.
10:13	But that doesn’t mean this story is over.
10:15	The plates of the Earth are always shifting, and if the perfect storm of plate movement
10:19	and climate change repeated itself, it could conceivably happen again.
10:23	Scientists are still finding more evidence of the MSC, from those fossilized mini-elephants,
10:29	to Nuralagus, to salt crystals found on land and under the Mediterranean Sea.
10:34	And while some events leave obvious marks on the planet’s surface, like mountains
10:37	and craters, there are others that you have to look harder to find traces of.
10:41	Even though the MSC shaped life in and around the Mediterranean for hundreds of thousands
10:46	of years, its fingerprints lie mostly out of sight, buried beneath the waves.
10:51	But the fossils of those dwarf elephants and giant rabbits let us see its effects, and
10:55	help remind us of that moment in geological time when the Mediterranean Sea disappeared.
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