Posted on 03/07/2010 2:43:20 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Focusing on a controversial hypothesis that ice existed at the equator some 300 million years ago during the late Paleozoic Period, two University of Oklahoma researchers originated a project in search of clues to Earth's climate system.
"The Paleozoic Period was a rare time in history," says Gerilyn Soreghan, OU professor of geology. "Broadly speaking, it was the last time our planet experienced the type of climate system we have today and in the recent past." Soreghan believes comparing more modern systems in a range of different climates might help support her hypothesis.
Soreghan and Elwood Madden, assistant professor of geochemistry, want to search for answers in four distinct environments: the cold-dry environment found in Antarctica, the cold-wet environment found in Norway, the hot-wet environment found in Puerto Rico and the hot-dry environment found in the Mojave Desert.
A National Science Foundation project proposal was submitted and the NSF responded with its own proposal recommending a pilot project to the most extreme location proposed -- Antarctica. Soreghan was surprised and excited by the NSF proposal. She then began preparing for the journey of a lifetime.
The OU team flew to New Zealand at the end of December and promptly went to the clothing distribution center to be outfitted for the trip. Even though Soreghan and two graduate students would arrive in Antarctica during the summer season, the extremely cold weather proved challenging.
The trip to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, took roughly 5 hours. Upon arrival, the team met with experienced University of Maine researcher Brenda Hall, who helped the team get ready for the next few weeks. They needed food, radios, tents and other essential equipment for the expedition.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
That is excellent.
you can have some fun with this inter-active gravity map:
http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_grav/mar_grav.html
and no, down there hasn’t always been the coldest part of the globe, there are fossil forests, lots of fossil plesiosaurs, fresh water lakes under the ice...and rivers.
“Wonder how they track where a piece of the crust is xxx years ago?”
By analyzing the rocks.
There is a part of the Appalachian Mountains that mysteriously appears in Argentina. THAT ONE really intrigues me!
We are, after all, talking about spans of years in tens-of-millions or hundreds-of-millions. That is a long, long time and the earth’s crust is moving those tectonic plates around constantly though slowly.
I keep reminding myself that God created the Universe. That includes all the scientific laws that operate within it.
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The Paleozoic is bracketed by two of the most important events in the history of animal life. At its beginning, multicelled animals underwent a dramatic "explosion" in diversity, and almost all living animal phyla appeared within a few millions of years. At the other end of the Paleozoic, the largest mass extinction in history wiped out approximately 90% of all marine animal species. The causes of both these events are still not fully understood and the subject of much research and controversy. Roughly halfway in between, animals, fungi, and plants alike colonized the land, the insects took to the air, and the limestone shown in this picture was deposited near Burlington, Missouri.
The Paleozoic took up over half of the Phanerozoic, approximately 300 million years. During the Paleozoic there were six major continental land masses; each of these consisted of different parts of the modern continents. For instance, at the beginning of the Paleozoic, today's western coast of North America ran east-west along the equator, while Africa was at the South Pole.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/AtlanticAge.jpg
Check out the crustal ages on the above graphic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQSrsy9xg70
epiphany?
No subduction zones?
...how do we get earthquakes?
My head hurts...
In 1888 Ivan Osipovich Yarkovsky suggested that some sort of aether is absorbed within the earth and transformed into new chemical elements, forcing the celestial bodies to expand. This was connected with his mechanical explanation of gravitation. [23] Also the theses of Ott Christoph Hilgenberg (1933, 1974) [24] [25] and Nikola Tesla [26] were based on absorption and transformation of aether-energy into normal matter.
Well we know there are particles flying around ,...coming out of the stars....
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Shutting down here....Nite....
300 million years ago New York was abutting North Africa and was inland in the eqyatorial region of Pangaea.
Pangaea did not start to break up until about 200 million years ago,
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