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Nature Geoscience 1, 211 - 212 (2008)
doi:10.1038/ngeo165
Earthquakes: Tsunamigenic Middle Earth
Roger Bilham1
- Roger Bilham is at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0399, USA.
e-mail: bilham@colorado.edu
Abstract
Violent uplift of western Crete in AD 365 generated a Mediterranean-wide tsunami that tossed boats onto house-tops in Alexandria, Egypt. Although a similar earthquake may not recur for 5,000 years, contiguous fault segments could rupture sooner.
Two decades after the destruction of Alexandria by a tsunami in AD 365, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote "the great mass of waters returning when it was least expected, killed many thousands of men by drowning; and by the swift recoil of the eddying tides a number of the shipwrecked persons lay floating on their backs or on their faces" (cited by ref. 1).
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