ArticleNature2014
Aridification of the Sahara desert caused by Tethys Sea shrinkage during the Late Miocene.
Article in Nature, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed, 292 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Rapid radiation of ant parasitic butterflies during the Miocene aridification of Africa.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
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- The evolutionary history and ancestral biogeographic range estimation of old-world Rhinolophidae and Hipposideridae (Chiroptera).BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Giant dwarf crocodiles from the Miocene of Kenya and crocodylid faunal dynamics in the late Cenozoic of East Africa.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2022Article
- Late Miocene Tarim desert wetting linked with eccentricity minimum and East Asian monsoon weakening.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Phylogenetic Analysis and Flower Color Evolution of the Subfamily Linoideae (Linaceae).Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Eccentricity forcing of East Asian monsoonal systems over the past 3 million years.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Orbital variations as a major driver of climate and biome distribution during the greenhouse to icehouse transition.Science advances · 2021Article
- Earth history events shaped the evolution of uneven biodiversity across tropical moist forests.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is widely believed that the Sahara desert is no more than ∼2-3 million years (Myr) old, with geological evidence showing a remarkable aridification of north Africa at the onset of the Quaternary ice ages. Before that time, north African aridity was mainly controlled by the African summer monsoon (ASM), which oscillated with Earth's orbital precession cycles. Afterwards, the Northern Hemisphere glaciation added an ice volume forcing on the ASM, which additionally oscillated with glacial-interglacial cycles. These findings led to the idea that the Sahara desert came into existence when the Northern Hemisphere glaciated ∼2-3 Myr ago. The later discovery, however, of aeolian dune deposits ∼7 Myr old suggested a much older age, although this interpretation is hotly challenged and there is no clear mechanism for aridification around this time. Here we use climate model simulations to identify the Tortonian stage (∼7-11 Myr ago) of the Late Miocene epoch as the pivotal period for triggering north African aridity and creating the Sahara desert. Through a set of experiments with the Norwegian Earth System Model and the Community Atmosphere Model, we demonstrate that the African summer monsoon was drastically weakened by the Tethys Sea shrinkage during the Tortonian, allowing arid, desert conditions to expand across north Africa. Not only did the Tethys shrinkage alter the mean climate of the region, it also enhanced the sensitivity of the African monsoon to orbital forcing, which subsequently became the major driver of Sahara extent fluctuations. These important climatic changes probably caused the shifts in Asian and African flora and fauna observed during the same period, with possible links to the emergence of early hominins in north Africa.
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