Posted on 06/04/2003 3:39:25 PM PDT by blam
Mammoth herds 'roamed fertile Bering Strait in Ice Age'
Huge herds of mammoth, wild horses and bison once roamed the land bridge between North America and Siberia, new evidence suggests.
Plant fossils have shown that 24,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, dry grassland covered much of region.
The vegetation would have allowed large populations of mammals to survive all year round on the now-submerged landmass known as Beringia or the Bering Strait.
Scientists writing in the journal Nature said the animals would have been sustained by a diet rich in prairie sage, bunch grasses, and other grass-like plants.
Grant Zazula, from Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, and colleagues analysed plant fossils from three sites in Canada's frozen Yukon territory.
During the Ice Age, the area would have had vegetation similar to that in eastern Beringia.
The scientists concluded that the region would have borne a grass-dominated ecosystem known as "mammoth steppe".
They wrote: "This vegetation was unlike that found in modern Arctic tundra, which can sustain relatively few mammals, but was instead a productive ecosystem of dry grassland that resembled extant (present) subarctic steppe communities."
Story filed: 18:40 Wednesday 4th June 2003
I don't know what that is.
1797 - 1875 </p.
Sir Charles Lyell was born in Scotland on November 14, 1797 and died in London on February 22, 1875. He attended Oxford University at age 19. He was knighted for scientific accomplishment in 1848. He later became a Baron in 1864. He grew up the oldest of 10 children. Lyell's father was an active naturalist. Lyell had access to an elaborate library including subjects such as Geology.
When Lyell was at Oxford, his interests were mathematics, classics, the legal system (law) and geology. He attended a lecture by William Buckland that triggered his enthusiasm for geology.
Lyell originally started his career as a lawyer, but later turned to geology. His zoological skills aided in his extensive studies and observations throughout the world. He became an author of The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man in 1863 and Principles of Geology (12 editions). Lyell argued in this book that, at the time, presently observable geological processes were adequate to explain geological history. He thought the action of the rain, sea, volcanoes and earthquakes explained the geological history of more ancient times.
Lyell rebelled against the prevailing theories of geology of the time. He thought the theories were biased, based on the interpretation of Genesis. He thought it would be more practical to exclude sudden geological catastrophes to vouch for fossil remains of extinct species and believed it was necessary to create a vast time scale for Earth's history. This concept was called Uniformitarianism. The second edition of Principles of Geology introduced new ideas regarding metamorphic rocks. It described rock changes due to high temperature in sedimentary rocks adjacent to igneous rocks. His third volume dealt with paleontology and stratigraphy. Lyell stressed that the antiquity of human species was far beyond the accepted theories of that time.
Lyell was married and his wife preceded him in death. He associated with many important people and went world wide when conducting his studies of geology. Charles Darwin became his dear friend and correspondent. Darwin is quoted saying, "The greatest merit of the Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it through his eyes."
I believe this is true today. ...and I'm a catastrophist.
our favorite!
free dixie,sw
that's good too;almost as good as DOG ( to quote Mel Gibson's character in The Patriot: DOG's a good meal!)!
free dixie NOW,sw
The two books are complementary. Certainly I'm not going to forward an explanation of why a mamoth would die and freeze in the ice, rapidly enough to preserve it as edible, even though the animal had undigested grass in it's stomach. But it's certain the cause was neither Venus nor Mars bumping into the Earth's magnetosphere as proposed and altering the axis of rotation. And definitely not within human memory. Nope. Didn't happen. Sir Isaac Newton forbids it.
Change in ocean currents, I would guess. Right now the North Atlantic is warmed by the Gulf Stream - but from what I have read about the Ice Ages, the circulation in the North Atlantic changed, blocking warm water from flowing northward. Hence the ice in Ohio and England. Likewise, a warm current could have kept Beringia ice-free.
I don't know what your background is and I'm just a layman who reads a lot about this stuff (with what little free time I have). I would love to see Velikovsky debunked but at this point I'm still keeping an open mind. My first question to you is what, of the anomalies descibed in his book, are the explanations that we have today? Why in the world are there huge masses of mammoth bones (and other animals) piled up in Alaska and Siberia, shattered and mixed in with gravel and broken trees? What of the caves in England and the other anomalies in the book?
Another thing that bothers me is why don't we learn about these anomalies? Are they really anomalies if there is evidence across the globe? I don't have the book with me to pull examples so I'm just going by memory. I'm not a Velikovsky apologist but it is interesting to me that only in his books do I hear about evidence like this.
You sound like you know what you're talking about and you seem familiar with Velikovsky so I'd love to hear what you have to say- like I say I have an open mind.
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