ABSTRACT
The Eastern Atlantic Region spans the western coasts of Europe and Africa, from Portugal south to southern Namibia. The oceanographic history of the Mediterranean Province is extremely complicated and still is poorly-known. The most dramatic period during the Cenozoic history of the Mediterranean Province occurred in the late Miocene, when sea levels dropped so low that all of the Mediterranean Sea actually dried up, becoming a series of salt flats and hypersaline lakes. During the mid-Pleistocene, sea levels again dropped precipitously due to glacial ice build-up, and this caused the Mediterranean basins to become separated from the Atlantic Ocean due to the emergence of the narrow Gibraltar Sill. The Algerian Subprovince, named for the Algerian Basin, encompasses the entire western half of the Mediterranean Sea, from the Strait of Sicily, northern Sicily, and western Italy in the east to Portugal and northern Morocco in the west, and including Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, and the Tyrrhenian, Ligurian, and Alboran Seas.
