Word.ws English Dictionary

Zanclean flood

Zanclean flood proper noun: a theorised flood, 5.33 million years ago, of the Mediterranean basin, then dry due to the Messinian salinity crisis, triggered by its reconnection with the Atlantic Ocean, that marks the transition from the Miocene epoch (Messinian age) to the Pliocene epoch (Zanclean age).

Proper noun

Zanclean flood

  1. A theorised flood, 5.33 million years ago, of the Mediterranean basin, then dry due to the Messinian salinity crisis, triggered by its reconnection with the Atlantic Ocean, that marks the transition from the Miocene epoch (Messinian age) to the Pliocene epoch (Zanclean age).
    • Tying a supposed post-Diest Sands fast sea-level fall to the event of the Zanclean flood is inconsistent with available ages. The drop in global sea level entailed by the still debated Zanclean flood, which would have ended the Messinian salinity crisis (base level fall of 1.5—2 km in a landlocked...2018, Rik Houthuys, Johan Matthijs, “14: The Hageland Hills, Legacies of the Depositional Architecture of the Miocene Diest Sands”, in Alain Demoulin, editor, Landscapes and Landforms of Belgium and...
    • Think of it as the Zanclean flood, the flood that more than 5 million years ago filled the empty cavity where the Mediterranean now sits.2020, Samuel Jay Keyser, The Mental Life of Modernism, The MIT Press, page x
    Synonyms:
    Zanclean deluge, terminal Messinian flood

Examples of Zanclean flood in a sentence

  • Tying a supposed post-Diest Sands fast sea-level fall to the event of the Zanclean flood is inconsistent with available ages.2018, Rik Houthuys, Johan Matthijs, “14: The Hageland Hills, Legacies of the Depositional Architecture of the Miocene Diest Sands”, in...
  • This formation represents the Zanclean flood that coincided with the end of the MSC event in the Cyrenaica Basin.2021, Osama Rahil Shaltami, Fares F. Fares, Hwedi Errishi, Farag M. EL Oshebi, Isotope Geochronology of the Exposed Rocks in the Cyrenaica...

Synonyms of Zanclean flood

Questions about Zanclean flood

What does Zanclean flood mean?
Zanclean flood means a theorised flood, 5.33 million years ago, of the Mediterranean basin, then dry due to the Messinian salinity crisis, triggered by its reconnection with the Atlantic Ocean, that marks the transition from the Miocene epoch (Messinian age) to the Pliocene epoch (Zanclean age).
How do you use Zanclean flood in a sentence?
Tying a supposed post-Diest Sands fast sea-level fall to the event of the Zanclean flood is inconsistent with available ages.
What part of speech is Zanclean flood?
Zanclean flood is a proper noun.

Words near Zanclean flood in the dictionary

  1. Zanata
  2. Zanatepec
  3. zanazziite
  4. zanbara
  5. Zanclean
  6. Zanclean flood
  7. zanclid
  8. zanclids
  9. zanclodontid
  10. zanclodontids
  11. Zand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Zanclean flood (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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