New US/Russian findings imply catastrophic flooding of the continental shelf of the Black Sea in mid 6000 BC. A shelly gravel surface marking an erosional event extends across the entire northern Black Sea continental shelf. This event has important implications for Holocene climate in the intercontinental setting of Eastern Europe and the exchange through Bosporus and Dardanelle Straits. The PI will use the existing sediment core material and conduct a new field program with European scientists. Sediment, faunal and isotopic analyses will be used together with C-14 dating and ultra-high resolution seismic profiling and wide-aperture multibeam bathymetry to test these ideas.
