Posted on 07/18/2008 10:57:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Geologists from the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, which has a permanent base in Panama, say engineers digging to widen the Panama Canal have uncovered more than 500 fossils including teeth and bones of rodents, horses, crocodiles and turtles that lived before a land bridge linked North and South America... Scientists believe the South American and Caribbean tectonic plates collided around 15 million years ago, causing volcanic activity that eventually formed a thin strip of land linking the Americas and separating the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The bridge was probably fully formed, in a way that mammals could walk over it, some 3 million years ago... Volcanic debris embedded in the same layer of rock as the fossils will help pinpoint the time when the animal was found on either side of the land bridge... The excavations are part of an archeological project to explore an area that will soon become part of the $5.25 billion project to expand the overcrowded Panama Canal.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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It's been a slow week I think, but I have lost weight through walking in the 90s heat. :') |
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ping!
Interesting. I didn’t know Panama was such a recent creation, geologically speaking.
Panama Ping!
Help! And did Congress pass legislation to save the world from global tectonic plate collisions?
Thank you, null and void, for your ping, and I am sorry I am late answering…(Unfortunately my sound is not working…but that is okay. I caught up with your message.)
I read that article with GREAT interest this morning which I will relate why:
Many years ago, I did my first two years of college at the Canal Zone Junior College. What a wonderful experience. We had such great professors.
In my sophomore year, I took one of my greatest memorable classes of all times. It was in geology.
We met on M,W,F early in the a.m. Our field trips were on Thursday p.m. every week.
On one of our field trips, we went to the Atlantic side to study the diggings of the old French canal.
The purpose of the field trip was to show how much this area had risen out the sea. There were many samples frozen into the rock formation. They were ancient shellfish. We were way up high along a cliff, which the French had cut into. We were walking way up high, single file, on thick reeds. At some point, I looked down between my feet and saw below we were walking on air. There was a tremendous free fall after that.
The point is we already knew this many years back that this area had risen out of the sea for whatever reason. We did not explore the Pacific side.
I am sure, Professor Vinton would be very excited to read this today if he were alive today.
(I know his daughter. She lives in the states. I will get this copy to her and my e-mail to you. I know she will appreciate it.)
Thank you for your post.
P.S.
The article first explores the Pacific side and not the Atlantic side because they have discovered a lot of exciting things here rather than on the Atlantic side. Reason being, the digging for the third locks has first started on the Pacific side. What wonders will they find on the Atlantic side.
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