Thanks Utilizer, left that other site, and GeronL. It's a nice double-list ping topic, and though I'm a little late getting around it, my chief weapon is surprise. That's all. Just surprise.
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Posted on 04/30/2015 7:13:19 AM PDT by Utilizer
Nine hundred kilometers off the east coast of Madagascar lies the tiny island paradise of Mauritius. The waters are pristine, the beaches bright white, and the average temperature hovers between 22°C and 28°C (72°F to 82°F) year-round. But conditions there may not have always been so idyllic. A new study suggests that about 4000 years ago, a prolonged drought on the island left many of the native species, such as dodo birds and giant tortoises, dead in a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces.
The die-off happened in an area known as Mare aux Songes, which once held a shallow lake that was an important source of fresh water for nonmigratory animals. Today, it’s just a grassy swamp, but beneath the surface, fossils are so common and so well preserved that the area qualifies as what scientists call a Lagerstätte, which in German means “storage space.” "What I wanted to know was, how did this drought cause this graveyard?” says Erik de Boer, a paleoecologist at the University of Amsterdam. “How did so many animals die?”
To find out, de Boer and colleagues analyzed sediment cores taken from the area. The layers in a core contain markers that can help scientists reconstruct an ecosystem’s history, such as preserved pollens and microbes. About 4200 years ago, monsoon activity declined dramatically, causing a 50-year megadrought on the island. The cores revealed that during the same time period, the ancient lake became a muddy, salty swamp. “Annually, the lake would get some fresh water in, however this drinking water turned foul during the dry season,” de Boer says.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Lol. I think I remember them too. Things were a little foggy back then.
I'd have thought it was slang for "watering hole" ....
I am absolutely flummoxed as to how the primitive human technology of the time could be causing global warming.
“Let’s hear it for the Entombed Dodos!!”
No one expects the dodofecalsarcophagus !!
” a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces.”
Gotta be a C grade sanitation rating at that restaurant.
poisonous fecal cocktail
Not exactly sure why, but somehow that phrase reminds me of Michael Moore...
............................
Or Barney Fwank.
Thanks Utilizer, left that other site, and GeronL. It's a nice double-list ping topic, and though I'm a little late getting around it, my chief weapon is surprise. That's all. Just surprise.
|
Thanks Utilizer, left that other site, and GeronL. It's a nice double-list ping topic, and though I'm a little late getting around it, my chief weapon is surprise. That's all. Just surprise.
Day?
Decade!
LOL
This drought corresponds to the droughts that brought down the old kingdom of egypt around 2100 bc
Definitely looks like it!
[snip] It had been thought that the deserts in northern China are one million years old, but a new study of the Hunshandake Sandy Lands of Inner Mongolia suggests that its desert is only 4,000 years old. [/snip]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3245894/posts
+1
Apparently a lot of them died because of that crisis 4200 years ago, but enough lived so man could have the final pleasure of killing them to extinction. I wonder if that boloid strike crater in the Iraq Marshes that is about 4,000 years old had anything to do with it. A number of middle east civilizations had serious problems at that time or were replaced by other groups. Egypt, Assyrians, Hittites, etc.
Similar towards where San Francisco is heading.
However they are much more likely to end up with a Sodom and Gomorrah finale than a Tsunami washout.
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