Daniel Garcia-Castellanos

Daniel Garcia-Castellanos (born 1968 in Barcelona) is a Spanish scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) who investigates in the field of geophysics and is known for his theory about the catastrophic flooding of the Mediterranean Sea known as the Zanclean flood in the recent geological past. Other contributions deal with the evolution of the Earth's relief as a result of the deep geodynamic phenomena of the Earth’s interior interacting with the erosion and climate at the surface.

Some of his studies (published in journals including Nature[1]) support the idea that, after being isolated from the world's oceans due to the collision between Africa and Eurasia due to Plate tectonics, the Mediterranean Sea underwent desiccation[2] known as the Messinian salinity crisis, and later a catastrophic reflooding[3][4] through the Strait of Gibraltar, 5 million years ago, the Zanclean flood.

In 1998, he received the Garcia-Siñeriz Prize,[5] for his PhD thesis on the formation of sedimentary basins. He is currently teaching and leading Europe-funded research projects on Earth's relief and flooding processes at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera, in Barcelona.