Posted on 03/25/2015 7:05:19 PM PDT by JimSEA
University of Colorado Boulder researchers propose a novel mechanism to explain the region’s high elevation No one really knows how the High Plains got so high. About 70 million years ago, eastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, western Kansas, and western Nebraska were near sea level. Since then, the region rose about 2 kilometers, leading to some head scratching at geology conferences.
Now researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder have proposed a new way to explain the uplift: water trapped deep below Earth’s crust may have flooded the lower crust, creating buoyancy and lift. The research appears online this week in the journal Geology and could represent a new mechanism for elevating broad regions of continental crust.
“The High Plains are perplexing because there is no deformation—such as major faults or volcanic activity—in the area to explain how this big, vast area got elevated,” said lead author Craig Jones, a CIRES Fellow and associate professor of geology at CU-Boulder. “What we suggest is that by hydrating the lower crust, it became more buoyant, and the whole thing came up.”
“It’s like flooding Colorado from below,” Jones said.
Jones and his colleagues propose the water came from the subducting Farallon oceanic plate under the Pacific Ocean 75 to 45 million years ago. This slab slid underneath the North American continental plate, bringing with it a tremendous amount of water bound in minerals. Trapped and under great pressure and heat, the water was released from the oceanic plate and moved up through the mantle and toward the lower crust. There, it hydrated lower crust minerals, converting dense ones, like garnet, into lighter ones, such as mica and amphibole.
(Excerpt) Read more at geosociety.org ...
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True!
But then, it once was an ocean floor.
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Not with plate movement and continuing wasting of uplifted material, it’s not a static situation. Where I live in western Oregon, there are sedimentary rock that have been pushed up due to the subduction of the ocean flower off the coast. Mudstone, shale, limestone and sandstone has been scraped off the subducting ocean floor, creating the coast range which is constantly eroding. To the east, in the cascades, andesite and volcanic ash is piling up into a mountain range and at the same time eroding. More land slides, etc.
Aren’t the Great Plains just the alluvium shed from the Rockies? I am not sure what their quandary is. Do they want a repeat of the Cretaceous seaway?
There are fossils of marine life near the top of Mt. Everest too.
It’s recreational pot Statewide, not just for medical use or in Denver alone. :-)
What is a deep soil landslide?
They are, in fact, a lot of that but they are also the sediment from the shallow inland sea that covered the area.
You think people will be condemned to hell for not believing the earth is 4,500 years old? You need to read 2 Peter 3:8.
It's trying to get away from Kansas.
I’m thinking of the old term “peneplain”. It basically is just sloping from the Rockies to the Mississippi River.
CO’s low point is ~3,325’, where the Arikaree River flows into KS near the CO/KS/NB tri-point.
MOUNT Sunflower, LOL
Have you ever climbed it? Be sure to bring plenty of H2O & get an early start!
Isn’t the point you refer to called Britton Hill?
Actually, several years back I watched a show about plate tectonics and they had a very interesting explanation, which involved Pangea with a water layer under it. Then, at some point a really big asteroid hit and broke thru Pangea and hit the aquifer. They had some cool experiments they did to determine what would happen, and basically it would create a crack around the globe and the water (under immense pressure) would blow out, pushing the halves opposite directions. Once the aquifer emptied, the plates would hit bedrock, now with momentum, and buckle.
The asteroid hit Iceland, and the evidence of the global split can be seen with the uplifts in both the Atlantic and Pacific which circle the globe. The buckling created the Rockies, and if you go up near Banff you can actually see flat plates that bent and broke.
The theory basically used evidence to support the biblical version. I wish I could find it again.
The earth farted!
(just thought this thread needed a little geopolitical perspective)
Dr. Brown, of hydro plate theory fame. I like it.
Woops...I meant to say NE for Nebraska, not NB. My bad.
NO, they won’t go to Hell over that one belief, provided that they have already accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, repented from their sins & try to follow His Word afterwards.
I don’t see why the earth can’t be 6 billion yrs old, or whatever the scientists believe that it may be. The verse you gave (2 Peter 3:8) might give an inkling about that, cuz none of us really knows — where does the Bible say that the day in the Genesis creation was 24 hrs long? There was a period of time betw the creation of earth & the rime that God created Man & breathed the breath of life into him. God works on HIS time, not ours.
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