Posted on 09/22/2009 11:02:43 AM PDT by decimon
After decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science.
The decision has been made by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the authority for geological science which has acted to end decades of controversy by formally declaring when the Quaternary Period, which covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools, began.
In the 18th Century the earth's history was split into four epochs, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. Although the first two have been renamed Palaeozoic and Mesozoic respectively, the second two have remained in use by scientists for more than 150 years. There has been a protracted debate over the position and status of Quaternary in the geological time scale and the intervals of time it represents.
"It has long been agreed that the boundary of the Quaternary Period should be placed at the first sign of global climate cooling," said Professor Philip Gibbard. "What we have achieved is the definition of the boundary of the Quaternary to an internationally recognised and fixed point that represents a natural event, the beginning of the ice ages on a global scale."
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
How will this affect the age of the paleoconservatives?
Reunite Pangea!
There have been other periods as well, and there are a variety of different conflicting models for what caused them. All of them have some glaring omission or insoluable problem, other than the one I’ve cooked up with some clear-cut help. :’)
It wasn’t really a particle. I’m not sure it was a singularity either. It may not have been a big bang either.
Probably best if we just give it a name... “Bob”. We’ll call the phenomena that resulted in the origination of the Universe (which probably isn’t really a Universe), we’ll call it “Bob”.
Some may refer to this non-particle as the Bob-particle because of the possible particle-like characteristics it may have exhibited just prior to the creation of time and space. Others may refer to it as the Bob-singularity, because of the similarities such a phenomena may have had to a singularity just prior to the creation and expansion of time and space into the dimensions we currently recognize as the Universe. Some may refer to this instance of the Universe in the Multiverse as the Bob-verse.
In any case, in the beginning there was Bob, and moments later there was everything else.
Doing some googling indicates that this period began with the joining of North and South America, closing the Isthmus of Panama and radically altering ocean currents.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Major_ice_ages
So all we need to do is remove Nicaragua from the face of the earth and all will be well?
“covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools”
This is an odd description. I thought it was simply the Pleistocene + the Holocene.
Ya know, removing the Isthmus is probably the only piece of terraforming our technology is capable of. But, as a strong believer in the law of unanticipated consequences, I think we just ought to stick with the status quo. :-))
killjoy
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