Posted on 05/27/2016 6:34:33 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Every year, millions of people travel to Utah to take in the beautiful and peaceful scenery in Zion National Park. According to a new study, however, the geographic stunner was formed by a massive prehistoric landslide that was far from tranquil.
The study, published Thursday in the Geological Society of America, said the parks flat valley floor owes its creation to the collapse of a wall of Navajo Sandstone that was almost 900 miles high. Weak layers in the underlying Kayenta Formation sent debris shooting across the canyon at speeds that likely reached 90 miles per second. It's believed that the event took place around 4,800 years ago.
"The ancient Zion landslide would cover New York City's Central Park with 275 feet of debris," Jeff Moore, senior author of the study, told Phys.org. "And you would need 90 times the volume of concrete in Hoover Dam to recreate the mountainside that failed." The massive slide blocked Zion Canyon over a distance of about two miles, damming what is now the Virgin River and forming Sentinel Lake, which lasted for 700 years before dissipating, according to the study. Remaining clay beds and fossil mollusks preserved throughout the canyon provide evidence of a time when the lake occupied the area before it became filled with sediment.
The landslide was first documented in a scientific paper in 1945, but this new study gives more details about when it took place, as well as insight into its characteristics. According to the study, the researchers took samples from 12 boulders across the rock avalanche deposit to test using surface exposure dating. They found that boulders across the surface of the slide had deposited simultaneously, which indicates the slide was a single, massive event.
(Excerpt) Read more at weather.com ...
A wall 900 miles high?
Miles or meters or feet? Once again, the illiteracy of the media.
Trump will do it if he has to!
900 miles high is grossly incorrect.
The Earth's atmosphere is about 20 miles thick
Subsidence owing to a plague of mice no doubt.
Heat, gravity, acceleration, deceleration and all the forces above and under are as diverse in units of strength when a push comes to a shove ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHbvRssyvY&index=19&list=PLP5FoSeDHoqiXcD5AX9uEXYDAd0jQ1o31
Mexico paid for it!
900 miles? That is the same math that brings you global warming, err, climate change.
I guess proof reading is a lost art.
LOL! 900 miles isn’t just an orbital height, it’s a height orbit.
Zion National PArk
Hitting satellites like a flyswatter!
and "debris shooting across the canyon at speeds that likely reached 90 miles per second"
That's debris reaching more than Mach 6.
Excuse my typo, Mach 360.
I believe that thinking is a lost art for a lot of people.The person who wrote this story should look elsewhere for work.Janitor comes to mind.....
Mach 360,the debris might get a little hot at that speed.
They must mean feet.
And the so-called Palestinians will blame it on the Jews (i.e. Zion National Park, a Zionist plot to take over America).
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