Perhaps I should have used a different set of words other than 'world wide flood' when I mentioned this phenomenon to Dave....but the theory explored in those links of wide spread flooding is closely related to the biblical account nonetheless. I mean give me a break...look at the title these two geologists named their book! My point is that there HAVE been instances of massive flooding during earth's past. THEY chose to name it Noah's Flood, not me.
I am sure we will hear more in the future on the findings of these explorations....as we all know it takes time to decipher the findings.
"Two geologists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have offered a new theory of what happened next. William Ryan and Walter Pitman, in Noah's Flood (Simon & Schuster), postulate that as time went on, the world warmed, the glaciers retreated and meltwater from the European glaciers began to flow north into the North Sea, depriving the Black Sea of its main source of replenishment. The level of the Black Sea began to drop, and most of the area around its northern boundary the area adjacent to present-day Crimea and the Sea of Azov became dry land. At this point, the level of the Black Sea was several hundred feet below that of the Mediterranean, and the two were separated by the barrier of the Bosporus, then dry land. This situation, with the world ocean rising while the Black Sea was falling, could not last forever. Eventually, like a bathtub overflowing, the Mediterranean had to pour through into the Black Sea basin."