A paper recently published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00653-2) by an international team of researchers, including Prof. Zohar Gvirtzman from the Geological Survey of Israel, demonstrates how Earth’s mantle dynamics led to the closure of the ancient Tethys Sea, a marine passage that once connected oceans, transforming it into a land bridge linking Africa and Asia. As a result, the climate changed and extensive animal migration
Tectonic processes that occurred over the past 66 million years led to the closure of the ancient Tethys Sea and the formation of the Taurus and Zagros mountain ranges in the collision zone between the Afro-Arabian and the Eurasian continents. The replacement of a marine passage—which once connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Indo-Pacific Ocean—with a land bridge that links Africa and Asia (via the Levant Corridor) triggered a series of far-reaching processes: global ocean circulation was altered, which in turn affected the climate. As a result of these changes, terrestrial animal species began migrating across the land bridge, while marine species evolved separately in isolated environments, leading to shifts in biodiversity.
In this paper, the authors examine the causes and consequences of the closure of the Tethys seaway and quantify the processes that shaped the region’s topography over the past 66 million years (the Cenozoic era). They explain how the formation of a hot mantle plume in East Africa (the Afar plume) and its northward flow created a phenomenon known as dynamic topography, which uplifted a vast area and triggered extensive volcanic activity. Later, during the Miocene epoch, the dynamic uplift of northern Arabia raised and exposed a large region that had previously been submerged (including northern Saudi Arabia, northern Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq), establishing a permanent land bridge between Africa and Asia. This new land connection enabled one of the most significant animal migrations of the Cenozoic era. Additionally, changes in global ocean circulation affected temperature and salinity contrasts between the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, leading to the modern ocean circulation pattern. The authors propose that these changes may have contributed to the Cenozoic cooling trend and that the uplift of the Afro-Arabian belt may have played a role in the development of the modern Asian monsoon system.
A paper recently published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment
דינמיקה במעטפת כדור הארץ כגורם לסגירת מעבר ימי שחיבר אוקיאנוסים (ים תטיס הקדום) והפיכתו לגשר יבשתי שמחבר יבשות (אפריקה ואסיה): השלכות לשינויי אקלים ונדידת בעלי חיים.
