How a salt giant radically reshaped Mediterranean marine biodiversity

A new study paves the way to understanding biotic recovery after an ecological crisis in the Mediterranean Sea about 5.5 million years ago. An international team led by Konstantina Agiadi from the University of Vienna has now been able to quantify how marine biota was impacted by the salinization of the Mediterranean: Only 11% of the endemic species survived the crisis, and the biodiversity did not recover for at least another 1.7 million years.