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Black Sea: Mediterranean Sea
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The Black Sea (... known as the Euxine Sea) is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Asia Minor. It is connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, and to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch. There is a net inflow of seawater through the Bosporus, 200 km3 per year. There is an inflow of freshwater from the surrounding areas, especially central and middle-eastern Europe, totalling 320 km3 per year. The most important river entering the Black Sea is the Danube.
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The Black Sea is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Anatolia. It is actually a distant arm of the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mediterranean Sea. It is connected to the Mediterranean by the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, and to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.
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During latest Quaternary glaciation, the Black Sea became a giant freshwater lake. The surface of this lake drew down to levels more than 100 m below its outlet. When the Mediterranean rose to the Bosporus sill at 7,150 yr bp1, saltwater poured through this spillway to refill the lake and submerge, catastrophically, more than 100,000 km2 of its exposed continental shelf. The permanent drowning of a vast terrestrial landscape may possibly have accelerated the dispersal of early neolithic foragers and farmers into the interior of Europe at that time.
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The Black Sea was once part of a larger body that included the Caspian and Aral seas. In the Tertiary period, it was separated from the Caspian Sea and was linked to the Mediterranean Sea. Evidence suggests that more recently, about 7,600 years ago, at the end of a long dry period, it was flooded when the Mediterranean, having again become separate, broke through at the Bosporus, an event that may have scattered farmers from its shores into Europe and Asia. Some scientists have hypothesized that this event happened catastrophically and is the source of the biblical story of the Deluge.
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The name "Black Sea" was given by the Ancient Greek navigators because of the unusual dark color, compared with the Mediterranean Sea. One reason for the name is that the water turns really dark when the sea is stormy.
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The Black Sea is the largest anoxic, or oxygen-free, marine system. This is a result of the great depth of the sea and the relatively low salinity (and therefore density) of the water flowing into it from rivers and the Mediterranean; freshwater and seawater mixing is limited to the uppermost 100-150m, with the water below this interface (called the pycnocline) being exchanged only once every thousand years. There is therefore no significant gas exchange with the surface, and as a result decaying organic matter in the sediment consumes any available oxygen. In these anoxic conditions some extremophile microorganisms are able to use sulfate (SO42-) for oxidation of organic material, producing hydrogen sulfide (HS) and carbon dioxide. This mix is extremely toxic (a lungful would be fatal to a human), resulting in a sea that has almost all of its ecology living in that top layer down to a depth of approximately 500 feet -- for the rest of the over 7000 feet of depth, there is basically no life at all.
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