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Posted By:
Hal Brown
Date Posted:
Oct 25, 2008
Description:
ALERT BULLETIN: THE LAND IS BEING COLONIZED BY INVADING FISH! The marauders have practically conquered the flatlands east of Little Rock.
Their claim has geological precedent. The area east of Little Rock is part of the Mississippi embayment. The Gulf of Mexico once extended as far back into the mainland as Cairo, Illinois. The underlying sediments here are all relatively young Cretaceous and Recent ages.
The problem with the fishy argument is that before the Gulf came in, there were mountains here. According to one geologist’s account (Scientific American, Jan. 2007), the Appalachian Mountains once wrapped around the southeast and were contiguous with the Ouachita Mountains. It was all part of the bumping together of giant plates to form one giant continent 300 million years ago.
Back during the Precambrian Period the super continent tried to break apart along a rift that went right through New Madrid. The Reelfoot Rift failed to open up completely, but it left a seismic zone that had what was historically the most intense earthquake in the United States (8.0+ on the Richter scale).
The theory proposed in 2007 to account for the rise and fall of the mountains here starts with the Bermuda hotspot, a thinning of the earth’s mantle with lots of volcanic activity. What is in Bermuda today was in Arkansas way back then.
(I haven’t checked with Dave Lima on this, but I know he is an expert on hot spots. I’m thinking that’s why he goes to Bermuda instead of Arkansas.)
As the continental plates drifted away from the hotspot, the underlying rock cooled and contracted. The mountains built on top of it subsided and eroded. The subsidence left a trough more than 2.5 km deep.
That’s when the fish moved in, and now it looks like they’re coming back. With the recent rise in sea level, they might be right.
Date Taken:
Oct 25, 2008
Place Taken:
South of Lonoke, AR
Owner:
Dan Nickens
File Name:
15_Fish_Invasion.jpg - Photo HTML
Full size - <img src="/show.php?splash=SZT1W0000h">
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Thumbnail - <img src="/show.php?splash=SZT1W0000s">
Category:
329, Taking Peli Home
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