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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks lbryce. About 2 million years ago, the Eltanin impact occurred. That's one possibility. |
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Posted on 12/11/2012 7:22:44 AM PST by lbryce
While working on a highway-widening project in the middle of South America's Atacama Desert, Chilean workers unearthed an eerie scene that had no business being more than a kilometer away from the ocean: a mass fossil graveyard containing more than 75 ancient whales, reports MSNBC.
Finding whale bones in the middle of the desert is strange enough, but scientists were quick to notice a deeper mystery. The fossils ended up right next to one another — some mere meters apart — as if to suggest that the whales all died at once, possibly during some cataclysmic tragedy. What could have happened?
"That's the top question," said Mario Suarez, director of the Paleontological Museum in the nearby town of Caldera.
According to Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the whales probably died between 2 million and 7 million years ago, during a time when the area would have been a "lagoon-like environment," much different than the desert landscape it is today. The real mystery, then, has less to do with how the whales got there, and more to do with why they died.
Could they have beached themselves after becoming disoriented in the shallows? Perhaps the lagoon had become separated from the sea by a landslide, earthquake or storm, trapping the whales within? Maybe there was something else about this lagoon that made it a whale trap. Right now, scientists aren't sure.
"There are many ways that whales could die, and we're still testing all those different hypotheses," said Pyenson. But, he added: "I think they died more or less at the same time."
Of the 75 whales that have been discovered so far, 20 of them represent perfectly intact skeletons, making the site one of the best preserved fossil beds from that time period along the west coast of South America. Most of the fossils are baleen whales that measure about 25 feet long, and one startling fossilized scene depicts two adult whales with a juvenile between them, a possible family group.
Researchers have also discovered fossils of other unusual creatures at the site, including a now-extinct dolphin that had two walrus-like tusks, an extinct aquatic sloth and an ancient seabird with a 17-foot wingspan. All in all, the site represents a remarkable snapshot of the ecosystem millions of years ago.
Although officials have asked that fossils that rest along the path of the widened Pan American Highway be moved out of the way, the Chilean government has declared the site a protected area.
"We have a unique opportunity to develop a great scientific project and make a great contribution to science," said Suarez. \
Yeah, but showing a picture of a row of beached whales isn’t enough.
Can you document every grain of wind blown or water born sand or flake of volcanic ash that covered them?
Cite chapter and verse, if you please...
These whales must have died in THE GREAT FLOOD!!! That’s what happened to BILLIONS OF FISH!!! Wait, what?
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks lbryce. About 2 million years ago, the Eltanin impact occurred. That's one possibility. |
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Excuse me, mighty Chilean miner, whose vast knowledge of plate tectonics has no bounds, my little pea brain has not farted out ANY biblical quotations on this thread. (Or is your reading comprehension as poor as mine?)
I confess I am too stupid to grasp hard subjects like fossils n' stuff, so please illuminate me regarding how these creatures could wash up on a beach, die, not get scavenged long enough to fossilize UNLESS they died in a pool of water that left them stranded.
The source of that particular pool of water is another subject I haven't even broached.
So vast keeper of knowledge, how did nullys 'excellent' washed up whales make it from a beach to fossils? Or did they die in a pool of water?
Of course ocean levels 'rise and fall relative to land mass' but surely you're not suggesting (like some global warming type or some creationist) that things like that happen so RAPIDLY that these whales got caught up in it, are you?
Excuse me, mighty Chilean miner, whose vast knowledge of plate tectonics has no bounds, my little pea brain has not farted out ANY biblical quotations on this thread. (Or is your reading comprehension as poor as mine?)
I confess I am too stupid to grasp hard subjects like fossils n' stuff, so please illuminate me regarding how these creatures could wash up on a beach, die, not get scavenged long enough to fossilize UNLESS they died in a pool of water that left them stranded.
The source of that particular pool of water is another subject I haven't even broached.
So vast keeper of knowledge, how did nullys 'excellent' washed up whales make it from a beach to fossils? Or did they die in a pool of water?
Of course ocean levels 'rise and fall relative to land mass' but surely you're not suggesting (like some global warming type or some creationist) that things like that happen so RAPIDLY that these whales got caught up in it, are you?
Excuse me, mighty Chilean miner, whose vast knowledge of plate tectonics has no bounds, my little pea brain has not farted out ANY biblical quotations on this thread. (Or is your reading comprehension as poor as mine?)
I confess I am too stupid to grasp hard subjects like fossils n' stuff, so please illuminate me regarding how these creatures could wash up on a beach, die, not get scavenged long enough to fossilize UNLESS they died in a pool of water that left them stranded.
The source of that particular pool of water is another subject I haven't even broached.
So vast keeper of knowledge, how did nullys 'excellent' washed up whales make it from a beach to fossils? Or did they die in a pool of water?
Of course ocean levels 'rise and fall relative to land mass' but surely you're not suggesting (like some global warming type or some creationist) that things like that happen so RAPIDLY that these whales got caught up in it, are you?
Excuse me, mighty Chilean miner, whose vast knowledge of plate tectonics has no bounds, my little pea brain has not farted out ANY biblical quotations on this thread. (Or is your reading comprehension as poor as mine?)
I confess I am too stupid to grasp hard subjects like fossils n' stuff, so please illuminate me regarding how these creatures could wash up on a beach, die, not get scavenged long enough to fossilize UNLESS they died in a pool of water that left them stranded.
The source of that particular pool of water is another subject I haven't even broached.
So vast keeper of knowledge, how did nullys 'excellent' washed up whales make it from a beach to fossils? Or did they die in a pool of water?
Of course ocean levels 'rise and fall relative to land mass' but surely you're not suggesting (like some global warming type or some creationist) that things like that happen so RAPIDLY that these whales got caught up in it, are you?
Nice 3-post nit wit...did the great flood do that??
BTW, your inability to answer a simple question is making me 'second guess' your firm grasp of plate tectonics.
Your sidekick Nully and you are great at middle school taunts but a little short on logical answers.
Come on now, surely you know that when you descend into childish name-calling, you've got nothing in the way of an argument.
Since you have ACTUALLY MINED in the country of Chile, and are thus an expert, do these perfectly preserved whale skeletons in the desert, (presumably at one time underwater yes?) indicate, as the article suggests, a lagoon environment at the time of death, or as Pinky, er Nully, suggests that they washed up/beached themselves on the then existent shoreline of the ocean? (And then somehow fossilized)
Can you stitch together a cogent answer, or should I expect another taunt?
BTW, your inability to answer a simple question is making me 'second guess' your firm grasp of plate tectonics.
Your sidekick Nully and you are great at middle school taunts but a little short on logical answers.
Come on now, surely you know that when you descend into childish name-calling, you've got nothing in the way of an argument.
Since you have ACTUALLY MINED in the country of Chile, and are thus an expert, do these perfectly preserved whale skeletons in the desert, (presumably at one time underwater yes?) indicate, as the article suggests, a lagoon environment at the time of death, or as Pinky, er Nully, suggests that they washed up/beached themselves on the then existent shoreline of the ocean? (And then somehow fossilized)
Can you stitch together a cogent answer, or should I expect another taunt?
Where would you get enough scavengers to fully eat, destroy and scatter the bones of a 75 whales more quickly than surf and sand can bury them?
Or if as LachlanMinnesota theorizes they were washed ashore by a tsunami, they would have been stranded at some distance from the beach, well above the high tide line. This would prevent the bodies and bones from bring scattered by tidal action.
The west coasts of the Americas tend towards dry and desert conditions, not many large predators as there simply isn’t enough food to sustain huge populations. It’s a race between few scavengers, dessication/mummification, decay and burial by wind blown sand, slit washed down from higher ground (you do know that there’s a whole continent of higher ground inland from the beach, right?) and ash from any number of Chile’s active volcanoes.
You assume the bodies had to be buried quickly. You base this entirely false assumption on HUGE numbers of MASSIVE predators and scavengers instantly descending on the beach and tearing 75 whale carcases to tiny bits and chewing telephone pole sized bones down to gravel every time there is a stranding.
Perhaps something like this does happen 99% of the time. There are, after all, a few mass strandings a year even now. Over the 6000 years of time even you will admit to, that’s say 10,000 cases? 1% of 10,000 would leave about 100 fields of fossilized whales.
Of course in the absence of lots of really MASSIVE predators, the carcases would collapse down from ten foot tall mountains of rotting flesh to one foot tall piles of bones (other that gravity, not much moves them, so they would still be more-or-less articulated, the ribs would stay in the middle, the jaw and skull would stay on one end, the tail on the other, etc.) in a year or so. It doesn’t really take all that much sand, ash, and silt to entomb them at that point. Anyone who has lived in the desert or through America’s dust bowl has swept that much out of their house in the course of a year!
Once buried, there is plenty of time for groundwater to infuse them with minerals (Unless you insist on the entire universe being a few millennia old, then you’re back to “God did it”).
In the mean while the same tectonic forces that caused the earthquake that triggered the initial tsunami haven’t stopped, indeed they are still active today, and the west coast of Chile is rising at an average rate of about a millimeter a year, más o menos. At about 2,000 to 2,500 m elevation and 1 mm a year rate that says the desert was at sea level 2-1/2 million years ago, within the 2-7 million year estimate for the age of the fossils.
Unless, of course you insist “God did it” in less than 6000 years, in which case he could do anything he darn well pleases, and ANY attempt to understand the universe is doomed from the start.
Worse, you have a god who deliberately plants false clues to deceive the inquiring mind, a trickster, a Prince of Lies.
If you look at any beaching, the corpses rot rather quickly, and if left to the motion of the waves, the bones get worn down by normal, pedestrian forces over a few years.
Unless they can be significantly moved away, tidal action is still problematic.
The other posters theory of a tidal wave might explain getting the corpses above tide line, true. If you assume the tidal forces were not acting on the corpses, then burying/covering the bones with a subsequent volcanic event makes sense.
As far as the 'dry and desert conditions' goes, you are projecting the current conditions backward.
In any case, if we ASSUME the present conditions also existed 2.5 million years ago, the dessicated bones would still wear to nubs with the sand/tide friction acting on them, unless of course, they were not subject to tide action, which has been my point.
A tidal wave stranding the corpses in a low lying area away from the beach, followed by a volcanic eruption or other stratifying event is plausible.
Plate tectonics are too slow, UNLESS you allow for rapid motion in the past, not a millimeter a year.
Is “pictures of Helen Thomas” on that list? If not, it should be, and it should be heavily enforced.
There is NO good reason to post a HT picture.
A millimeter a year is the average rate. The 2010 8.8 quake raised some beaches a couple meters. That would put anything stranded at the high tide mark well beyond the reach of waves.
Sorry for getting back to this late, but I agree!
It’s isn’t but it should be.
It was a rapid event: http://www.threeimpacts-twoevents.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SIMULTANEOUS-IMPACTS7.pdf
The plates were created by the event described in the slides at the link. Continental drift is falsified by new data (google maps).
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