TESTIMONY OF SEA FAUNA AND FLORA
Strong evidence indicating the rise and fall of the seafloor more than three miles at a time are the fossilized remains of marine plants and animals. This evidence proves that it is not impossible for large areas of mid-ocean seafloor to have been elevated to the point of becoming dry land, before subsequently subsiding to depths of three miles or more. And this can happen almost over night, geological speaking.
For instance, while exploring the Wyville Thomson Ridge (between Iceland and the Orkney Islands), the Norwegian Polar Expedition (1893-1896), led by Fridtjof Nansen, found large quantities of shells and otoliths of sea animals normally inhabiting only shallow waters. They were found in the seabed at about 72°N Latitude at depths approximating one thousand meters (3300 feet), and onward to the south at depths of twenty-five hundred meters (8200 feet). (Nansen, 1900-1903)
His conclusion was that these areas of the North Atlantic must have dropped thousands of feet (almost two miles in some cases) very suddenly, otherwise the shallow-sea animals would have had time to escape to the continental shelf. This did not take place millions of years ago--the time-frame for the subsidence was determined to be not more than 12,000 years ago (i.e., the Recent Epoch).
In the early 1900s the newly built German research vessel Gauss was launched on its first expedition to study the South Atlantic seafloor. The expedition made significant discoveries to the south of our proposed location for Atlantis. Cores were obtained containing sand, granite, gneiss and chrystalline schist--all continental materials. Layer "b" also contained minerals forming hypersthenic gneiss (i.e., continental rocks). (Zhirkov, 1958)
Subsequent investigation performed by the Swedish oceanographic research vessel Albatross corroborated these earlier finds: the bottom layer included fossilized remains of benthomic foraminiferra that can only live in depths of 100 to 200 metres. Cores taken at "depths between 2000 and 4000m" (1.25 and 2.5 miles respectively) contained shallow-water globigerina ooze! The conclusion was that the area within the Romanche Deep (one of the deepest parts of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) had first risen 1000m, then subsided a shocking 6000m--almost three and a half miles! (Pettersson, 1946)
Red-clay (a light detrital material from the continents) and calcarous ooze (calcium carbonate from the decomposed skeletons of billions of microorganisms) was deposited along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the Quaternary period. The report by Sclater & Tapscott (1979) states that the calcarous ooze is most predominate near the crest of the Ridge.
In 1957, Dr. Rene Malaise of the Riks Museum in Stockholm announced that a colleague, Dr. R. W. Kolbe, had found proof of the geologically recent subsidance of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Dr. Kolbe of the Swedish Museum of Natural History had been commissioned to investigate diatoms found in deep-sea cores obtained during the 1947-1948 Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition. Although the expedition included a globe-encircling study, only those cores taken from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge yielded the following: multitudinous shells of fresh-water diatoms (small lake animals) and fossilized remains of terrestrial plants (Kolbe, 1957). Let me repeat that. Land plants and fresh-water animals were found fossilized on the Atlantic Ocean bottom along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (See also Kolbe, 1958)
Dr. Malaise theorized that parts of the Ridge must have existed as large islands up to the end of the last Ice Age or later: i.e., as recently as 10,000-12,000 years ago. He also theorized that these landmasses must have had fresh-water lakes in order to account for the existence of fresh-water animals (Malaise, 1956).* Commenting on Malaise' theory, Kolbe writes: ". . . it provides a natural explanation of the layer consisting exclusively of fresh-water diatoms, which is otherwise difficult to comprehend" (Kolbe, 1957).
The six levels of terraces discovered by the Woods Hole expeditions suggest that the Atlantic island was constantly changing shape--as well as being reduced in size--before it finally disappeared at the end of the Ice Age. Such geological changes would have been catastrophic to any life living on such a landmass: the unhappy result of the constant violence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. If the Atlantic landmass happened to be inhabited by humans, these violent disturbances could well have been the cause of the four Cro-Magnon "invasions" outlined on the Anthropological page of this web site. These well documented invasions impacted the western shores of North Africa and Europe (including Great Britain and other Atlantic islands) and occurred during a time frame of 35,000-12,000 years ago (the last invasion corresponding closely to the date given by Plato for the demise of Atlantis).
