NEWS re Black Sea Flood

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> The incoming salt water, more dense than the fresh water it
> displaced, plunged to the bottom of the lake bed, transforming it
> into a sea where the depths support no life.

But how could the Black Sea have been a freshwater lake during a period
when it had no outlet to the sea?  The Black Sea has a number of major
rivers flowing into it, and presumably has had these for a very long
time.  Rivers carry salt.  If they carry it into a lake with no outlet,
then the lake just gets saltier and saltier: witness the Caspian Sea,
which is in just this position.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk