Episode 204 - The Messinian Salinity Crisis

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2024

⏱️ 135 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Around six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up, wreaking havoc with local marine life and leaving a dramatic legacy in the geologic record in the form of massive salt deposits. This episode, we’ll explore the evidence for this event, why it happened, how it ended, and the impact it left in the fossil record. In the news: marine crocs, giant cicadas, giant tadpoles, and drowning bats. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:25Main discussion, Part 1: 00:42:35Main discussion, Part 2: 01:09:35Patron question: 02:02:15 Check out our website for this episode’s blog post and more: http://commondescentpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Got a topic you want to hear about? Submit your episode request here: https://commondescentpodcast.com/request-a-topic/ Lots more ways to connect with us: https://linktr.ee/common_descent The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.0	Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Common Descent podcast where we talk about paleontology, evolution, Earth history, and so on.
0:27.9	This episode, we're focusing on a very specific event in Earth history, the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
0:35.3	This is an event I know practically nothing about. This is a really, we've got a few
0:39.9	requests for this one. It's a very famous, it's a niche famous event in Earth history. Yeah.
0:45.5	The Missinian salinity crisis happened about six million years ago and it's when the Mediterranean
0:49.1	sea dried out. Oh, that's bad. So we will talk about what that means, why it happened, how it happened,
0:58.1	and what the effects were, and also how we know that that happened. Spoiler alert, the answer is
1:03.8	so much salt. Yes. Just so much salt in the rocks. Well, it's, it's from the title title, you know that we, this either means too much salt or not
1:13.2	enough salt.
1:13.9	Yes.
1:14.3	This is a too much.
1:15.3	A salinity crisis and the crisis was too much salt.
1:19.8	Too much salt and not enough ocean.
1:22.0	That was really the, that was the issue.
1:24.3	There's your problem.
1:25.3	Every episode of the podcast is requested by our audience.
1:29.6	This topic was requested by Jackie, Ivana, Mathrove, and Eric. Thank you all very much for the
1:36.4	excuse me, not as deep a dive as usual as it is. We're going to, this is the shallow end.
1:43.0	This is going to be, it's going to be pun central.
1:45.7	We've got a whole lot of it.
	...

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