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News: Plato's Atlantis: Fact, Fiction or Prophecy?
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CarolAnn_Bailey-Lloyd
http://www.underwaterarchaeology.com/atlantis-2.htm
 
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Evidence from the floor of the ocean

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Carolyn Silver
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« on: August 04, 2008, 05:15:55 am »

Evidence from the floor of the ocean

In a 1954 issue of Geological Society of America, Bulletin, Bruce Heezen and others reported on a seamount - an underwater mountain - that has been named Atlantis by geologists and is in the Atlantic Ocean. It has been found to have been an island about 12,000 years ago - exactly the time specified by Plato! This abstract is given:
The Atlantis, Cruiser, and Great Meteor seamounts rise from a broad ridge or plateau which extends from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to 37°N. 32°W. southeast to Great Sea mount at 30°N. 28°W. The Atlantis Sea mount, briefly explored 1947 and 1948, was found by echo sounding and submarine photography to have a fairly flat bedrock summit area at about 180 fathoms covered in some cases by current-rippled sand. Its slopes are covered with sand or ooze symmetrically rippled at 400 fathoms and marked by slump features in 570 fathoms. A small piece of volcanic agglomerate was dredged from 400 fathoms on the north slope. About a ton of flat pteropod limestone cobbles was dredged from the summit area. One of the cobbles gave an apparent radiocarbon age of 12,000 years ±900 (J.L. Kulp). The state of lithification of the limestone suggests that it may have been lithified under subaerial [i.e. above water, on land surface] conditions and that the sea mount may have been an island within the past 12,000 years. (Heezen, Bruce C., et al, "Flat-Topped Atlantis, Cruiser, And Great Meteor Sea Mounts" in Geological Society of America, Bulletin, 65:1261, 1954 (Protogonos issue 9))

In later studies, evidence was found for the remnants of a "sunken block of continent" in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. An articlein New Scientist 1975 summarizes the result. (Anonymous, New Scientist,66:540, 1975)

Although they make no such fanciful claim from their results as to have discovered the mythical mid-Atlantic landmass, an international group of oceanographers has now convincingly confirmed preliminary findings that a sunken block of continent lies in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery comes from analysing dredge samples taken along the line of the Vema offset fault, a long east-west fracture zone lying between Africa and South America close to latitude 11øN.


The article describes the first report of "shallow-water limestone fragments" from the Vema Fracture in the Atlantic:

Four years ago two University of Miami workers, J. Honnorez and E. Bonatti, first reported the recovery of shallow-water limestone fragments from the Vema fracture zone. This limestone contained minerals indicative of a nearby granitic source unlikely to occur on the ocean floor. Neither water currents, nor more esoteric transport systems, could explain the presence of these rocks so far from the modern boundaries of the continents. The two researchers believed that, instead, the granitic grains must have been deposited close to their source.

Then the recent researchers are noted:

Now, with C. Emiliani of Miami, Paul Bronniman of the University of Geneva, M.A. Furrer of Esso Production Research, Begles, and A.A. Meyerhof, a consulting geologist from Tulsa, USA, they have carried out a more searching analysis of the dredge samples (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 26, p.Cool

Finally he notes the evidence for activity in less than 30 meters ofwater, and even some evidence for activity in soil.

The Limestones include traces of shallow-water fossils - foraminifera, green algae, bits of gastropods, and crab coprolites - implying formation in water, in one instance, less than 30 m deep. Furthermore, the limestones have been recrystallized from a high to low-magnesium form of calcite. Oxygen and carbon-isotope ratios prove conclusively that this process must have taken place subaerially [on land surface] "through the action of meteoric water enriched in light carbon while passing through a soil zone ..." A pitted limestone sample bears evidence of tidal action. Some 50 km east of the dredge site along the Vema fracture the team also recovered a thick-shelled, shallow-water, bivalve fossil from a depth of over 2000 m.

The coprolites in the sample indicate a Mesozoic age for the limestone which may well be the sedimentary capping on a residual continental block left behind as the [??] spread out into an ocean. The granitic minerals could thus have come from the bordering continents while the ocean was still in its infancy. Vertical movements made by the block appear to have raised it above sea level at some period during its history.

(from Unknown Earth: A Handbook of Geological Enigmas by William R. Corliss.)



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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2008, 05:18:28 am »



As early as 1883 Ignatius Donnelly suggested that the mid-Atlantic Ridge was a remnant of Atlantis. But most modern geologists and oceanographers consider that, far from being the relic of a continent that sank beneath the sea, the ridge was forced upward from the ocean floor, probably by volcanic activity. One theory is that as the continents drifted apart they produce a huge fault line that is a center of earthquake and produce a huge fault line that is a center of earthquake and volcanic action. Some of the earth's molten center has erupted through this crack and built up into a ridge, even rising above the waves in several places. However, there is evidence that this explanation may have to reviewed before too long.

 

A diver taking part in A.R.E.s Poseidia 75 expedition to Bimini in the Bahamas examines an encrusted marble column found about a mile south of the Bimini Road. In 1968, what appeared to be a vast underwater road was discovered off Bimini, and the next year the columns, of which this is one, were found.
 

Seabed cores taken from the mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1957 brought up freshwater plants from a depth of two miles. And in one of the deep valleys, known as Romanche, sands have been found that appear to have been formed by weathering when that part of the ridge was above water level. In a 1969 a Duke University research expedition dredged 50 sites along an underwater ridge running from Venezuela to the Virgin Islands, and brought up granitic rocks, which are normally found only on continents. Commenting on this discovery, Dr. Bruce Heezen of the Lamont Geological Observatory said:

"Up to now, geologists generally believed that light granitic or acid igneous rocks are confined to the continents and that the crust of the earth beneath the sea is composed of heavier, dark-colored basaltic rock... Thus, the occurrence of light-colored granitic rocks may support an old theory that a continent formerly existed in the region of the eastern Caribbean and that these rocks may represent the core of a subsided, lost continent."

A recent report on the nature of the Atlantic seabed appears to confirm that there is at least part of a former continent lying beneath the ocean. Under the heading "Concrete Evidence for Atlantis?" the British Journal New Scientist of June 5, 1975 reported, "Although they make no such fanciful claim from their results as to have discovered the mythical mid-Atlantic landmass, an international group of oceanographers has now convincingly confirmed preliminary findings that a sunken block of continent lies in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery comes from analyzing dredge samples taken along the line of the Vema offset fault, a long east-west fracture zone lying between Africa and South America close to latitude 11º "N".

 

The report goes on to state that in 1971 two researchers from the University of Miami recovered some shallow-water limestone fragments from deep water in the area. Minerals in the limestone indicated that they came from a nearby source of granite that was unlikely to occur on the ocean floor. More exhaustive analysis of the dredge samples revealed that the limestones included traces of shallow-water fossils, implying formation in very shallow water indeed, a view confirmed by the ratios of oxygen and carbon isotopes found in the fragments. One piece of limestone was pitted and showed evidence of tidal action.

The researchers believe that the limestone dates from the Mesozoic era (between 70 and 220 million years ago) and forms a cap "on a residual continental block left behind as the Atlantic spread out into an ocean." the New Scientist observes that

"The granitic minerals could thus have come from the bordering continents while the ocean was still in it infancy. Vertical movements made by the block appear to have raised it above sea level at some period during it's history.

It would therefore seem that there is a lost continent in the Atlantic, but unfortunately for Atlantists, it evidently disappeared long before man appeared on earth. Most scientist remain convinced that there is no likelihood of finding the Atlantis described by Plato in the area of the mid-Atlantic Ridge. As L. Sprague de Camp comments in his Lost Continents, nearly all of the ridge, except for the small and mountainous Azores region, is under two or three miles of water, "and there is no known way to get a large island down to that depth in anything like the 10,000 years required to fit in with Plato's date for the sinking of Atlantis." He also points to a report published in 1967 by Dr. Maurice Ewing of Columbia University, who announced that "after 13 years of exploring the mid-Atlantic Ridge, he had "found no trace of sunken cities."

Atlantists reply that Dr. Ewing could have been looking in the wrong places, or perhaps too close to the center of the destructive forces that plunged Atlantis into the ocean. Some Atlantists have suggested that the original Atlantic landmass broke up into a least two parts, one of which sank long after the other. Perhaps Plato's Atlantis was a remnant of the continent that oceanographers now appear to have detected in the Atlantic, and perhaps it was not submerged until very much more recent times. The bed of the Atlantic is, after all, an unstable are and one that has given birth to numerous islands, then swallowed them up again. In 1811, for example, volcanic activity in the Azores resulted in the emergence of a new island called Sammrina, which shortly sank back again into the sea. In our own time, the island of Surtsey, 20 miles southwest of Iceland, has slowly risen from the ocean. Surtsey was formed during a continuous underwater eruption between 1963 and 1966.

If Atlantis did exist in the Atlantic above the great fault line that runs between the present continents, it would certainly have been plagued by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Is it mere coincidence that Plato should have situated his lost continent in an ocean that does apparently contain such a continent, and in an area subject to the very kind of catastrophe he describes? Atlantists think not.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_bermuda_5f.htm
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Mark of Australia
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« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2008, 08:03:51 pm »

Hi

This is great stuff Carolyn. I will look into that about the sunken continental block.

...And that book about geological enigmas looks good. I'll try to get it .
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2008, 03:14:27 am »

Hey Mark!

Did you notice the location of this particular block of sunken continent?

Quote
The discovery comes from analysing dredge samples taken along the line of the Vema offset fault, a long east-west fracture zone lying between Africa and South America close to latitude 11øN.

The Vema fault between Africa and South America, LOWER IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, CLOSER TO THE EQUATOR!

In other words, most Atlantlologists have been looking IN THE WRONG PLACE!
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