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 creatureâs 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 ...
thanks!
...and I found this:
http://bell.lib.umn.edu/olaus/index.html
Olaus Magnus Map of Scandinavia
click on the map to enlarge any section.
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the rest of the Lake Missoula keyword:
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