Thanks BenLurkin.
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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 park’s 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 ...
I did it in my head, with out references. That’s why I said “more than”.
And moving 90 miles/second? 340,000 mph?
...It's believed that the event took place around 4,800 years ago.Thanks BenLurkin. Of course, since it was 900 miles high and moved at 90 miles per second, and that can't be right, it must have happened only 48 years ago. ;')
In my view, Zion lacks the raw beauty of the other Utah National Parks
The Saidmarreh Landslide
http://geology.com/landslides/saidmarreh-landslide.shtml
Largest Landslides in the World
http://geology.com/records/largest-landslide.shtml
Lost me right there. So this mountain range extended out of the earth’s atmosphere?
Thanks.
Worst case of editing and proof reading ever.
If it hadn’t collapsed our satellites would bump into it. And 90 miles a second? The writer learned his physics and math in Public School, I think. When he looked over the piece before turning it in it probably all looked okay to him.
I don’t know how these “writers and editors” can allow this stuff to be posted online. Either some one blew this assignment or their trying to get a job as a technical writer for the next IPCC report.
“Miles or meters or feet? Once again, the illiteracy of the media.”
Hey, it passed spell check. What more is there? /s
I’d like to see the debris pile from a collapsed wall that had been 900 miles tall.
They're my units, dang it. They can mean anything I want. If you don't like them, get yer own units.
Envision about a quarter of the moon (mean radius about 1,080 miles) landing on the Earth and then collapsing.
/most journalists are morons
The highest peak at Snowbird is 11,000 feet. My kids are ski lift formen. That’s roughly two miles.
Two.
LMAO ... WTF ... etc., etc ...
Reading comprehension has suffered mightily.
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