Geoscience: Euphrates River likely formed from two others 3.6 million years ago (Nature Geoscience)
2 June 2026
Two ancient river systems that once discharged into a partially dried-out eastern Mediterranean Sea merged to form the modern Euphrates River in Western Asia, according to research published in Nature Geoscience. The findings suggest that regional tectonic activity redirected the two waterways, which in turn may have led to the development of the Fertile Crescent.
The early history of the Euphrates River, which stretches about 3,000 kilometres from Turkey to the Persian Gulf, has been unclear. Different theories have proposed that it may have terminated in lakes in Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, or the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. Understanding the evolution of this important waterway is important for charting the later development of human societies that flourished in its floodplains.
Andrew Madof and colleagues examined seismic images of buried sediments, maps of ancient sediment deposits, and river sediment transport models. They show that two separate rivers — the Palaeo Karasu and the Palaeo Murat — flowed across what is now Turkey and Syria and emptied into a Mediterranean Sea basin that had partially dried out during the Messinian Salinity Crisis about 5.4 million years ago. The authors propose that later tectonic activity caused the Palaeo Murat to shift southeast towards the Persian Gulf, with the Palaeo Karasu joining it sometime afterwards. These diversions eventually created a single river system that evolved into today’s Euphrates River about 1.6 million years ago and flows into the Persian Gulf.
The authors note that some uncertainties remain owing to the difficulty of reconstructing ancient river paths and relying on models rather than direct field evidence. Future work to test and refine this proposed history, they suggest, will require more on the ground observations and improved dating methods.
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 01 June 2026
Madof, A.S., Laugier, F.J., Baumgardner, S.E. et al. Late Miocene Euphrates River drained into a partially desiccated eastern Mediterranean. Nat. Geosci. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-026-01962-x
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