The area of eastern Washington sculpted by the mammoth-killing Ice Age floods. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Posted on 06/11/2007 8:47:57 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The fossils, in some cases whole skeletons of Mammathus columbi, the Columbian mammoth, were deposited in the hillsides of what are now the Yakima, Columbia and Walla Walla valleys in southeastern Washington, where the elephantine corpses came to rest as water receded from the temporary but repeatedly formed ancient Lake Lewis. PNNL geologists are plotting the deposits to reconstruct the high-water marks of many of the floods, the last of which occurred as recently as 12,000 to 15,000 years ago... Geologists suspect that most of the Ice Age floods in eastern Washington originated from glacial Lake Missoula. The lake formed behind ice that dammed the Clark Fork River. Sometimes the ice dam broke, releasing huge volumes -- up to 500 cubic miles -- of water in an instant. The dam would slowly reform creating a new Lake Missoula, and the cycle would repeat... Preliminary results place most mammoth finds in the Lake Lewis area at elevations of 600 to 1,000 feet, which echoes the distribution of boulders that originated from far away -- so-called erratics -- and rafted in on icebergs. The evidence suggests that these elevations mirror the typical water depths when Lake Lewis and that larger floods and deeper waters, up to 1,200 feet, were exceptions rather than the rule. Full skeletons found at lower elevations were likely buried soon after death-by-torrent, a hard to imagine wall of water a half-mile high spanning the doomed creature’s entire field of vision and approaching as fast as 60 miles an hour. Some fragments may have come from full skeletons churned up and redistributed by later floods, while others may actually have ice-rafted in with erratics.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
The area of eastern Washington sculpted by the mammoth-killing Ice Age floods. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
ML/NJ
global warming killed the mamoths...
One note. "Huge" offshore underwater landslides off the same coasts have always been attributed to earthquakes. I think that theory deserves a further look...
Having analyzed many dam break scenarious in my younger days, I buy it just fine.
Ice dams break quite suddenly and, although "in an instant" may be a bit of a hyperbole, a 24 to 48 hour time period is quite possible given the volume and the distances that the floods traveled.
For living things in the lowermost one fourth of the flood path, that is a distinction without a practical difference.
Animals were sensing the P waves from the earthquake and the tsunami’s interaction with the sea floor, both of which moved much faster than the tsunami waves. I’ve never heard of any seismic waves associated with ice dam failures, let alone any species that would have it genetically programmed to respond to ice dam failure seismic waves.
Several years ago I went on a field trip to examine the soils of the channeled scablands in Washington State. Really interesting place. Here and there were erratic boulders the size of a small house. I would like to have seen that flood....from high ground.
Agate Spring Quarry -
In Sioux county Nebraska, on the south side of the Niobrara River, in Agate Springs Quarry, is a fossil bearing deposit up to twenty inches thick. The state of the bones indicate a long and violent transportation before they reached their final resting place. '...the fossils are in such remarkable profusion, in places, as to form a veritable pavement of interlacing bones, very few of which are in their natural articulation with one another,' says R.S. Lull, director of the Peabody Museum at Yale, in his book on fossils.'
The profusion of bones in Agate Springs Quarry may be judged by a single block now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, this block contains about a hundred bones to the square foot. There is no way of explaining an aggregation of fossils as a natural death retreat of animals of various genera.
The animals found were mammals. The most numerous was the small twin horned rhinoceros (Diceratherium). There was another extinct animal (Moropus) with a head not unlike that of a horse but with heavy legs and claws like that of a carnivorous animal. And bones of a giant swine that stood six feet high (Dinohyus hollandi) were also unearthed.
The Carnegie Museum, which likewise excavated in Agate Spring Quarry, in a space of 1350 square feet found 164,000 bones or about 820 skeletons. A mammal skeleton averages 200 bones. This area represents only one-twentieth of the fossil bed in the quarry, suggesting to Lull that the entire area would yield about 16,400 skeletons of the twin-horned rhinoceros, 500 skeletons of the clawed horse, and 100 skeletons of the giant swine.
A few miles to the east, in another quarry were found skeletons of an animal which, because of its similarity to two extant species, is called a gazelle camel (Stenomylus). A herd of these animals was destroyed in a disaster. ~ the transportation was in a violent cataract of water, sand, and gravel, that left marks on the bones. Tens of thousands of animals were carried over an unknown distance, then smashed into a common grave.
The catastrophe was most likely ubiquitous, for these animals-the small twin-horned rhinoceros, clawed horse, giant swine, and gazelle camel-did not survive, but became extinct. ~ the very circumstances in which they are found bespeak a violent death at the hands of the elements, not slow extinction in a process of evolution.
I agree.
Thanks! Looks like it would have made a great topic of its own. :’)
Sounds like a mammoth mammoth-killing.
Or better yet, an aircraft (of course, some turbulence was probably in evidence during the flood).
It’s an exerpt - ‘Agate Spring Quarry’ (chapter V in my copy of EiU.)
When at the Spokane Flood cafe, *never* order ice water.
same in the hardcover. :’)
Genesis....chapter 7.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
