A few months ago we made a list of the world’s largest lakes on Magnet. We were surprised at the time to learn that the largest lake was (and by far) the largest. Caspian Sea, a name that curiously hints at its past, when it was adjacent to the ocean about 11 million years ago. This huge salt lake almost the same size as japan.

Equally incredible are the five Great Lakes that stretch and form along the border of Canada and the United States. One of the largest freshwater collections in the world. This series of interconnected lakes, about 20% of fresh water around the world and supports more than 100 million people.

However, if we go back centuries. There is a lake that surpasses them all by a vast margin. We’re talking about the largest and most gigantic lake ever recorded on planet Earth. We are talking about Megalago Paratethys.

So that you can imagine its majestic size, covered an area larger than the current Mediterranean and it would stretch from the Alps above Italy today to Kazakhstan in Central Asia. According to data from Science Alert, it has more than 10 times the current volume of all freshwater and saltwater lakes in the world, and would have covered an area of ​​about 2.8 million square kilometers at its peak.

Here’s a map to give you an idea of ​​the size:

Formed 9.75 million years ago, this vast body of water was once home to species found nowhere else. world’s smallest whales. The aquatic ecosystem was unique and home to everything from mollusks and crustaceans to dolphins that evolved over the centuries to adapt to its limited environment.

And yet, it dried up millions of years ago.

How is it possible for such a titan to dry out? This is what dozens of scientific studies are trying to solve. Aspect water levels dropped and salt levels rose, few of these creatures survived. Why did all this happen? By This work published Naturewith four weather-related disaster events that shrank the lake as water levels dropped to as low as 250 metres.

According to the researchers, at the worst time of drying, the lake lost 70% of its water and more than two-thirds of its surface. made salinity of water In the central basin of the lake, it will jump from nearly a third of the salinity of present-day oceans to a level similar to seawater, similar to the contours of the present-day Black Sea.

A change in the weather (familiar to all of us)

The study highlights that changes in temperature and precipitation in Eurasia also affect changes on land, for example, open environments replace forest environments and forest types change. While they continue to explore how these evolutions feed and influence each other, the authors say.

Not only that. Experts estimate that in addition to the significant change in continental vegetation, the Sahara and Arabian Peninsula deserts also formed at this stage. Even, changes in the weather The water drying up the lake also affected the evolution of land animals in these regions, as evolutionary biologist Madelaine Böhme of the University of Tübingen explains in this other study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

About 6.7 million to 6.9 million years ago, Paratethys ceased to exist. erosion created an outlet on the edge southwest of the lake. Most likely, this outlet, now under the Aegean Sea, gave way to a small river that gradually found its way into the Mediterranean.

Currently, the only remnant of Paratethys in our world is the Caspian Sea basin (which is still a lake) and the Black Sea, which is connected to the Mediterranean Sea. The other surviving relic, the Aral Sea, is about to suffer the same fate as Paratethys, which scientists consider “one of the greatest ecological disasters caused by man.” It’s only a matter of time before they all disappear.