The Paratethys breaks up
A vast brackish inland sea across Eurasia fragments into the Black, Caspian and Aral basins.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 6.7 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
The Paratethys, cut off from the open ocean by Alpine and Carpathian mountain building, spends the Miocene as a series of enormous brackish lakes and seas stretching from central Europe to central Asia. Repeated isolation and reconnection drive extreme salinity swings and spectacular endemic faunas, and one late Miocene drawdown, the Great Khersonian Drying, may have removed a third of its water. Its remnants are the Black Sea, the Caspian — still the largest lake on Earth — and the Aral.