Ice Sheets Caused Massive Sea LevelLed by Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University, the scientists examined cores from Ocean Drilling Program Leg 174AX, an onshore extension of an offshore expedition. They found indications that sea level changes were large (more than 25 meters) and rapid (occurring on scales ranging from thousands to less than a million years) during the Late Cretaceous greenhouse world (99- 65 million years ago)... Analyses indicate minimal tectonic effects on the New Jersey Coastal Plain at this time, the scientists say. The other explanation for such large, rapid changes is the waxing and waning of large continental ice sheets, they maintain. What is perplexing, however, is that such large and rapid sea-level changes occurred during an interval thought to be ice free... The scientists propose that the ice sheets were restricted in area to Antarctica and were ephemeral. The ice sheets would not have reached the Antarctic coast, explaining the relative warmth in Antarctica, but still could significantly alter global sea level.
Change During Late Cretaceous
(Period was previously
thought to be ice-free)
National Science Foundation
February 27, 2004
Last Updated: December 8, 2004
"...What is perplexing, however, is that such large and rapid sea-level changes occurred during an interval thought to be ice free..."
I would be more than 'perplexed' !
GREENLAND: Of its 840,000 square miles of surface, over 700,000 are covered with an immense mountain of ice that leaves free only the coastal fringes. The thickness of the ice is measured by listening to the echo that comes from the bedrock when a detonation is set off on top of the ice. It is found to be over six thousand feet thick.
"For a long time it was the belief of many that a large region in the interior of Greenland was free of ice, and was perhaps inhabited. It was in part to solve this problem that Baron (N.A.E.) Nordenskjold set out on his expedition of 1883."
He ascended from the icecap from Disco Bay (latitude 69) and went eastward for eighteen days across the ice field. "Rivers were flowing in channels upon the surface like those cut on land...only that the pure blue of the ice-walls was, by comparison, infinitely more beautiful. These rivers were not, however, perfectly continuous. After flowing for a distance in the channels on the surface, they, one and all, plunged with deafening roar into some yawning crevasse, to find their way to the sea through subglacial channels. Numerous lakes with shores of ice were also encountered."
"On bending down the ear to the ice," wrote the explorer, "we could hear on every side a peculiar subterranean hum, proceeding from rivers flowing within the ice; and occasionally a loud single report like that of a cannon gave notice of the formation of a new glacier-cleft...In the afternoon we saw at some distance from us a well-defined pillar of mist which, when we approached it, appeared to arise from a bottomless abyss, into which a mighty glacier-river fell. The vast roaring water-mass had bored for itself a vertical hole, probably down to the rock, certainly more than 2,000 feet beneath, on which the glacier rested."
The Ice Age survived in Greenland. This arctic island reveals how vast continental areas looked in the past. However, it does not explain how ice could have covered British Guiana or Madagascar in the tropics. And what is no less surprising, the northern part of Greenland, according to the concerted opinion of glaciologists, was never glaciated...
from Earth In Upheaval.
Immanuel Velikovsky.