Ocean basins 3

An old ocean - the Mediterranean Sea• Ocean crust is largely of Cretaceous age, with some mid-Tertiary ocean crust (asyoung as 25 Ma) south of Italy.• The Mediterranean, like the Red Sea, also has thick evaporite sequences of lateMiocene age, but for different reasons.The Mediterranean salinity crisis:Connection to other oceans became restricted ca. 20 Ma due to the ongoingcollisionEvaporite sequences are 1 km thick and more in places, deposited ca. 5 Ma.It represents multiple, nearly complete evaporations of Mediterranean over a~700,000 year period72