The Tethys closes
The great east-west equatorial ocean is pinched shut, and the Mediterranean is what is left of it.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 7 million years
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
The northward march of Africa, Arabia and India progressively closes the Tethys, cutting the circumglobal equatorial seaway that had run between the northern and southern continents for 200 million years. The consequences are oceanographic as well as geographic: warm water can no longer circulate around the tropics unimpeded, and heat transport reorganises. The western remnant becomes the Mediterranean; the eastern remnant becomes the Indian Ocean's northern margin. The Paratethys, a separate brackish inland sea, is left stranded across eastern Europe.