Interesting. Five million years is not so long in geological time, so how is that such "exposed section of lithified sediment deformed by the megaflood" (note photo) are now above sea-level, did Sicily rise so much since then?

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Sea levels rise and fall with ice ages. There's a ton of ice sitting on Greenland and Antarctica right now that wasn't there 5 million years ago and sea levels (ocean) were 10 - 30m higher than they are today. And the Mediterranean fluctuated even more than that.

But, that said, there has definitely been some significant uplift (probably between 1km to 1.5km) involved from Africa and Europe colliding.

So the uplift dominates the sea level decline (outside of events like the one the article is about), but the exact position of the coastline is still dependent on the sea level.