Indian Town Sees Evidence Of Ancient Tsunami (1500 ya)

MSNBC/AP ^ | 1-15-2005

[twigs]

Tree ring analysis has indicated that a major disruption took place some time around--I forget the exact year--537/8 AD. Give or take a few years. Some historians have wondered if it impacted on major events like King Arthur and Britain. Intersting stuff, this. Thank you.

[blam]

"Tree ring analysis has indicated that a major disruption took place some time around--I forget the exact year--537/8 AD. Give or take a few years. Some historians have wondered if it impacted on major events like King Arthur and Britain."

Yup. One of my favorite threads:

The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?

[jrewing]

Didn't George Harrison do one?

"Concert for Poompuhar"

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks blam.

Note: this topic is from 1/15/2005.

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[SunkenCiv]

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[KoRn]

I think it’s a common misconception(often due to inaccurate writing/reporting) that the event 65 million years ago “wiped out” the dinosaurs. I’m sure it killed many instantly, but I understand that the event was more of a ‘nail in the coffin’ for them, rather than a singular event that caused their mass extinction.

[MaxMax]

I that Yafter A or Yefore A?

[SunkenCiv]

It’s not a misconception. There’s no fossil evidence for a decline in the dinos or for a transition to mammals prior to Chicxulub. There have been one or two finds which have been purported to indicate dino survival of the impact, by literally the same folks who formerly claimed that there’s no way to find a sudden event in the fossil record. But even their purported finds show exactly that.

The Great Dying was known for decades, and was puzzled over, because gradualists couldn’t consider the right questions. If the extinction of whole taxa comes about because of impacts from space (or for that matter, worldwide volcanism as Dewey McLain and others have claimed), it undermines the Darwinian view, which is why the rejectionist front (as it were) is rooted in England.

[KoRn]

Wow... I didn’t know that.

I stand corrected! Was just difficult for me to imagine something 6 miles wide wiping out most living things on the entire planet all of the sudden like.

[SunkenCiv]

The impact of the impact (I love doing that) was multiple, and had a long reach. According to the late Eugene Shoemaker, an object about a mile in diameter would, as a consequence of an impact on land, produce a deep, thick cloud cover totally obscuring the sky within a couple of hours, and that cloud cover would last for weeks or months.

IOW (’Civ adds), the surface of the Earth would be in nearly pitch darkness, the temperature would fall, and the hydrologic cycle would slow to a nearly imperceptible crawl — hence, all the rivers and streams would dry up. As a consequence, land-based plants would die or go dormant due to lack of light and water. Living creatures would chew off the bark from all the trees, eat up all the other plant remains, and the oxygen levels in the oceans would drop. Possibly (depending on the duration), the oceans would themselves freeze over.

Chicxulub is estimated at six miles (as you noted) diameter — meaning the mass would approximate six cubed of a one mile object...

[KoRn]

Thanks for the thorough explanation! I hadn’t considered the chain reaction(s) that are set off from the initial event. Almost like dominoes in a way.

Fortunately, we(and our children’s children, children) will likely never see such a thing!

IMO, the greatest immediate threat to humans, given our numbers and mobility is deadly communicable diseases... and Leftists. lol

[gleeaikin]

I don’t think that acceptance of Catastrophism as a factor in world history harms the idea of Evolution any more than gradualism. When conditions change, there are new ecological niches, and some organisms evolve to fit into them. In fact evolution really takes off after a catastrophe as so many conditions are changed in so many places. The rise of mammals and large birds was quite spectacular in the Paleocene.

Regarding the tsunami, I wounder if it was caused by a large earthquake, or a boloid strike at sea. Certainly Casiodorus reported weird conditions in the atmosphere, but nothing about earthquakes or tsunamis. A boloid falling in the Indian Ocean would not have any affect on the Mediterranian Sea. On the other hand it could affect atmospheric conditions.

[SunkenCiv]

IMV natural selection is, at best, a force for extinction, and only hypothetically. It’s an outmoded Victorian model.