In addition, I have read that there is evidence for a sudden rush of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico which occured at the approximate end of the last ice age.
This was not a slow stream, but a sudden outpouring of water. An event heating the atmosphere over the Great Lakes could have caused this.
Yes, it's known as the younger dryas period(a type of grass that proliferates in the cooler, dryer environment of ice ages). Appearently the athabasca glacier emptied into the gulf of mexico, then it melted a path thru to the St Lawrence river, dumping all that cold, fresh water into the north atlantic. That then reversed the on-going emergence from the ice age for about 1000 years, disrupting the gulf steam that warms europe, until the melt water flow returned to the gulf of mexico once again. Even here in MT/ID/WA we have clear evidence of massive, periodic floods from Lake Missoula, filling all the valleys of western MT, and gouging out the channeled scablands of western WA state, plus deepening the Columbia River basin.....This excellent report is suggesting that a supernova, possibly with a magnetic field anomoly(we know the earth's magnetic field is dynamically evolving)is primaily responsible for melting us out of the last ice age. Good, interesting science detective work!
could this have also caused the formation of the Grand Canyon? I have heard theories that the canyon did not form slowly over time, but in one or two large-scale events.
The beavers back then were really big and but really big dams...
I'm thinking more of glacial dams, such as what they have in Iceland, and geothermal energy fosters a
"catastrophic" releases of water.
So, perhaps the water was released by activity in the Yellowstone caldera region?