Eridanos (geology)

Eridanos (geology)

The name Eridanos, derived from the ancient Greek Eridanos, was given by geologists to a river which flowed where the Baltic Sea is now (Overeem, et al., 2002). Its river system was better known as the 'Baltic River System' (Bijlsma, 1981; Gibbard, 1988).

The Eridanos began about 40 million years ago in the Eocene. By about 12 million years ago in the Miocene, the Eridanos had reached the North Sea area where sediments carried by the river built an immense delta. The Eridanos disappeared in the early Middle Pleistocene when the Ice Age glaciers excavated the Baltic Sea bed.