Nile

:For alternative meanings of "Nile", see Nile (disambiguation)

The Eonile

The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian Highands. Satellite imagery identified dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. An Eonile Canyon filled by surface drift represents an ancestral Nile, called the Eonile that flowed during the later Miocene, transporting clastics and light sediments to the Mediterranean, where several gas fields have been discovered. South of Cairo, the sand-filled canyon reaches 1400 meters.

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When the Mediterranean Sea was a hot dry empty salt-floored sink in the late Miocene period, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred feet below world ocean level at Aswan and 8000 feet below at Cairo. This huge canyon is now full of later sediment.

Related Topics:
Mediterranean Sea - Miocene - Aswan - Cairo

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Formerly Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile, until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. That would have made the Nile much longer, with its longest headwaters in northern Zambia.

Related Topics:
Lake Tanganyika - Virunga - Rwanda - Zambia

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