Levantine Sea to be the oldest known ocean crust worldwide. The Suez Canal was completed in 1869, linking the Levantine Sea to the Red Sea. The Red Sea's level is higher than the Eastern Mediterranean, so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean. The Bitter Lakes, which are hypersaline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and
Mediterranean Sea crisis, before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. It covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km (965,000 sq mi), but its connection to the Atlantic (the Strait of Gibraltar) is only wide. The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Gibraltar and Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa. In oceanography, it is sometimes called the "Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea" or the "European Mediterranean Sea" to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere. The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of and the deepest recorded