I read a story years ago, about the end of the Dinosaur Era. It came complete with an artist’s conception of a duck billed dinosaur watching a comet falling from the sky. The story related how a strange light appeared in the sky, which steadily grew brighter and brighter until it illuminated the night skies and paled the Moon with its brilliance as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. They estimated that on its final plunge to Earth,for a few minutes the comet brilliance, and the heat it emitted, far exceeded that of the Sun. The story went on to explain, how the comet on smashing into the Earth, belched up this gigantic cloud of dust and debris. Which in turn, spread over the Earth, blocked Sun’s rays, and fostered the frigid ice age, which exterminated the dinosaurs.
There have been a hundred of versions, of the above story, published. The theory has been so thoroughly accepted by the scientific community that millions of children around the world have shamefully been taught: It is the reason the dinosaurs became extinct. There is no greater sin in education than presenting some hyped theory to children, as as scientifically proven phenomenon.
Knowledge ceases to grow in minds that have accepted false answers.
The above story was not related because of any probability that it may be true. There are far too few clues supporting the theory, to give it any real credence. Yet the story of the comets approach does clearly allegorizethe actual phenomenon that brought about the dinosaur’s extinction. But the ever brightening light that approached Earth was not a comet, and it could not have possibly paled the Moon with its brilliance. The approaching light was the Moon.
And it passed so near to Earth that its gravitational pull sped up the Earth’s rotation. The earth accelerated from rotating once a year, to rotating once everyday, once every twenty-four hours. No Dinosaurs survived the catastrophic event.
The “Dinosaur Era” was over.
The Earth/Moon close encounter wreaked incredible havoc upon the Earth. The Moon has a diameter of 2160 miles [3,475 kilometers] equal to about one-quarter of 7,926.4 miles [12,7534 kilometers] the Earth’s diameter at the equator. As it brushed Earth on its original orbit, the Moon was probably traveling at a rate exceeding, 40,000 miles [64,360 kilometers] per hour. The Moon’s mean distance from the Earth is reportedly, 238,857 miles [403,668 kilometers].
The orbit is quite elliptical, varying more than 30,000 miles [48,270 kilometers], from aperigee of 216,420 miles [348,220 kilometers], to 247,667 miles [398,496 kilometers] at their apogee. The Moon covers about 716,568 miles [1,152,kilometers] in 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and a second or so, to orbit the Earth. So, the Moon is still circling the Earth at an average speed of about 26,248 miles [40,624 kilometers] per hour.
The distance the Moon missed colliding with Earth is very problematic. But there undoubtedly were many catastrophic phenomena instigated by the emce. Still, it is all vary iffy. There are too many variables: The distance that separated the Earth and the Moon on their first, nearest perigee, and the rate the Moon was traveling, relative to Earth, on its first pass by Earth, is crucial questions. But only time, and a great deal of tedious research, can ever blueprint exactly how, when, or where, all those horrific events unfolded.
That said: In my mind’s eye, the following paragraphs fairly accurately describe some of the Earth-shaking phenomena the emce likely triggered.
As the Moon passed by Earth, Lunar Gravity attracted the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a huge atmospheric bulge, which followed the Moon as it arced around the Earth. This movement of the atmosphere generated winds with velocities far exceeding any, the primeval, placid Earth had theretofore experienced. Winds, which uprooted, leveled, and killed nearly everything in the storm’s path. Wherever the moon passed over land it left a horrific path of total devastation in its wake.
As the Moon passed over water, the same winds that wreaked havoc on land, created mighty storm surges, which flooded any coasts they encountered. The winds racing along under the Moon, at hundreds of miles per hour, undoubtedly scooped up water and carried it thousands of feet up into the air. If any traces of water are ever found on the Moon, we could learn that the Moon acquired that water during its visit to Earth. Yet, the storm surges that preceded the Moon, and flooded far inland, were of little consequence, compared to the tidal waves that followed in the Moon’s wake. Three things contributed to forming the tidal waves; the low water levels left on the Moon’s passing, [Major wind surges, always leave low sea levels behind them] the intense vacuum left in the Moons wake and the gravitational pull of a Moon passing so horrifically near. The three combined forces created a great rush of water that converged in the Moon’s wake, and raced after the Moon. Great tsunamis, hundreds of feet high, following the Moon completely inundated whole continents. Simply put, the gravitational pull of a Moon nearly sucked the ocean-beds dry and pulled that water over nearly everything in its path.
The Pacific Ocean with its Glacier Girdle may have with stood the onslaught to some extent. Though undoubtedly the ice that had covered the Pacific Ocean, for many millions of years was shattered, sloshed back and forth, and in places, heaped into tremendous piles. Prior to its brush with the Moon, our Earth rotated but once a year. Or to put it in perspective, a given dot on the equator moved at about 2.8 miles [4.6 kilometers] per hour. In a very short time, probably less than an hour, the rotation of the Earth accelerated until it was completing a revolution once a day, once every twenty-four hours, until a given dot on the equator moved at about1,037.5 miles [1,169.4 kilometers] per hour, as it does today. [I said about because, the rotation of the Earth is slowing down, and those first days after the dinosaurs died, were shorter than they are now. So the proverbial dot on the Equator was actually moving a bit faster than it is now.]
Although nearly the entire rate of the Earth’s rotation can be contributed to the Moon’s first, and closest, pass by Earth, it is possible that subsequent orbits may have also passed close enough to further accelerate the Earth’s rate of rotation. The Earth’s waters, at least on the hemisphere opposite the Moon, failed to accelerate as quickly as the solid Earth’s crust. The faster the Earth turned, the further the waters receded. Actually, due to the Earth’s spherical form, the water on the Northern Hemisphere receded to the Northwest, and the water on the Southern Hemisphere receded to the Southwest. The end result was, the Earth’s waters circled away from the Equator, toward the Axial Poles. As anything moving centripetally accelerates, the North and South Axial Poles were deluged with centripetally converging waters. Once the Moon had left the Earth’s atmosphere and proceeded on its first orbit, its effect on the Earth’s rotation abated. And the Earth’s rate of rotation stabilized. But, the centrifugal force, generated by the Equator regions spinning, at at thousand plus miles per hour, throw the Earth out of kinetic balance. [The Earth, is still out of kinetic balance. A person, weighing 200 pounds at the North or South Pole, will weigh about 199pounds at the Equator].
Scientists have never been able to explain why the Earth is out of kinetic balance. Gravity is attempting to flatten the Earth at its Poles and increase its girth at the Equator, to reestablish kinetic balance. But crustal plates move very slowly. And lava flows and all other contributing factors add but undetectable smidgens of mass to the equatorial regions. If all contributing factors remain as is, gravity will eventually have its way, and the Earth will slowly be reformed until it regains kinetic balance. In a couple hundred million years more or less, it’s likely our earth may just regain something approaching kinetic balance.
About two-thirds of the Earths surface is covered with water, and centrifugal force drew those waters that had been directed toward the Axial Poles while the rotation of the Earth was accelerating, rushing back toward the equatorial regions. And it was not only, the quantity of water that was previously at the Equator, which rushed back to the region. Centrifugal force contributed somewhere close to another 45 feet, (15 meters) of water to the equatorial regions. Simply put, water like the aforementioned man, weighed less at the Equator than at the poles, and rose proportionately to compensate for the waters that grew heavier toward the Axial Poles.
Diminishing, flood and ebb tides continued to ravage the Earth’s coasts for a week after the emce phenomenon. A short time compared to the atmosphere, which failed to accelerate sufficiently to obtain any real stability for months. For the first week following the Moons passing, east winds far in excess of a hundred miles per hour buffeted the whole equatorial region. The lower atmosphere took months to accelerate sufficiently, for the winds to establish any semblance of wind patterns, similar to those we have today. Ten years after the Moon's first pass by Earth, as it passed perigee it was still creating tides twices as formidable as any suffered on Earth today.
The centrifugal force generated by the whirling Earth after emce, threw our world drastically out of kinetic balance, and instigated many untenable pressure changes on the Earth’s crust. Indubitably, such a sudden, drastic, geological adjustment triggered innumerable earthquakes,and brought on a rash of volcanic activity. Instability of the Earth’s crust was further heightened, and prolonged for many years, as the Glacier Girdle melted, and the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, released from the burden of the glaciers great weight, began to decompress, began to rebound.
It is a bit hard to comprehend how much solid rock can be compressed, and rebound, when subjected to and then released from a great weight. For example, the land around the great lakes is still rebounding, rising, from the compression of the last Ice age. Comparatively speaking, since the Glacier Girdle began melting, we could guess that the compressed rock under it has probably expanded hundreds of feet. But there is little data available to support such a hypothesis. Gravity tests do confirm that the area under the Ring-of-Fire, the area which was under the Glacier Girdle, is still heavier, is still more compressed, than the strata in the adjacent areas. We do know that areas, such as the Great Lakes area, do rebound after being compressed with glaciers. But our knowledge of how much, or how quickly rock formations will compress, or rebound, is very scant. Different types of rock formations probably compress and rebound, at different rates, and in varying degrees. For now, just saying the formations once covered and compressed by the Glacier Girdle, have rebounded a significant amount, and are still expanding is about all we dare declare.
Actually a phenomenon of much greater consequence than the strata under the Glacier Girdle decompressing was initiated when the edges of the crustal plates, which had been tilted down by the awesome weight of the Glacier Girdle, begin to rise, to level. The edges, of both the oceanic and continental crustal plates that meet at the Pacific Ocean shores began to rise. The tilting of these oceanic and crustal plates activated numerous earth quakes and a string of volcanic activity that circled the Pacific Ocean, and ignited the so called, “Ring-of-Fire.” Proof that crustal plates move, tilt very slowly, lies in the fact that the volcanic activity and accompanying earthquakes which encircle the Pacific Ocean, are still very active.
Simply put, shortly after emce the atmosphere established and cleared sufficiently, to enable the Sun to commence thawing the Glacier Girdle. As the Glacier Girdle melted, the edges of the adjacent crustal plates, relieved of their great burden of ice,began to rise. Actually gravity began to slowly re-level the plates and the aforementioned edges have risen continuously until this day. And they are presently still leveling at a rate sufficient to maintain a very active Ring-of-Fire. The lifting of the oceanic and continental plates where they meet at the shores of the Pacific Ocean are also responsible for creating the deep oceanic trenches. Obviously, the Earth’s Crust cracked, for the most part, on the oceanic side of the Glacier Girdle, in the Western Pacific, and on the continental side of the Glacier Girdle, on the Eastern, or North and South American side, of the Pacific. The oceanic trenches were not created by any mysterious,unfathomable force, by any Devil residing deep within the bowels of the Earth. They have simply opened, as the edges of the crustal plates have risen.
Before man made his first trip to the Moon, scientists estimated that the astronauts would find the Moon carpeted with from 6 to 15 feet [2 to 5 meters] of dust. They of course, made that assumption assuming that the Moon had been a companion of Earth for the last four or five billion years. According to our best radiometric tests, the Moon has been around somewhere, and most likely somewhere in our Solar System, for at least close to four billion years. That is time enough to gather a lot of dust, dust that for the most part blew off of the Moon, during emce. This Moon dust is what is responsible for the thin layer of iridium rich dust deposited at the K-T Boundary. The emce initiated many, all most unimaginable horrific phenomenon, besides the total devastation that the Moon left in its wake.
The Moons passing, and the Earth starting to accelerate, spawned a multitude of the most violent storms this old Earth has ever suffered. Nearly all of the dinosaurs, which were alive on Earth during the emce, died a violent weather related death, within a matter of a few hours after the Moon entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Horrific winds picked up grown dinosaurs, like they were so many autumn leaves, and hurled them against giant trees and rocks, and anything else that jutted above the lay of the land, breaking their bones and even dismembering and decapitating some of them, before dropping their lifeless forms alee some geological raise which deflected the wind. Many dinosaurs undoubtedly drowned, or were beaten to death by debris in raging torrents as continents were deluged. The winds, during and shortly after emce, were undoubtedly much less severe above the Forty-Fifth Latitude North, and below the Forty-Fifth Latitude South.
But the floods were more devastating in those Polar Regions. The dinosaurs in those areas were definitely no more fortunate, because there is little doubt, that twenty-four hours after emce, about everything above or below those latitudes was frozen solid. It is possible that some small burrowing animal, which had a snug barrow and a windfall to forage in, could have survived. Likewise, any small creature that lived in a creek fed by awarm spring had a niche, from which it might pass its genes onto a kinder, more bountiful environment.I can imagine, a small opossum like animal wondering aimlessly around, bewildered, in a world that had suddenly turned bitter cold and near lightless, when it suddenly runs into the remains of a five-ton animal. Feeling the warmth still lingering in the giant frame, the little carnivore gnaws through the tough hide, and barrows its way deep into the massive frame. And in doing so, secures an Ark that will carry her,and the tiny young in her pouch, over until an ever brightening Sun starts to periodically shine though the hazy skies. Live is tenacious, yet the really interesting mystery is no longer how the dinosaurs become extinct, but how the survivors, survived.
[Remember: At this time the Axial Poles had not yet begun the shift to their present position.] It is probable that the emce left more dust in the air, than the mythical meteor that killed the dinosaurs, supposedly left. Undoubtedly the emce also spawned numerous earthquakes, and may have initiated lava flows, as well as many volcanic eruptions. And it is very likely that the lava flows and volcanoes added some additional unneeded components to the already hazy skies.
Much of the Moon dust that surely nearly obliterated the Sun from the sky, at least for a short time, was much heavier than volcanic ash, and may have settled rather quickly. And the emce probably lifted large quantities of water, many thousands of feet into the stratosphere, which may have fallen rather quickly, and could have washed much of the dust from the sky. The astronauts said that they found gravel on the Moon, which looked like it had been windrowed, by the wind. During emce, some gravel probably was blown into windrows on the Moon, and some was undoubtedly blown clear of the Moon and fell to Earth. Moon gravel which fell to Earth, may explain the tektites that are strewn across what was the original Equatorial Region.
And of course during emce, is likely when at least some the Moon rocks, which have been found in Antarctica, were dislodged from the Moon’s surface, and fell to Earth. As the Moon entered, and left, the Earth’s atmosphere, it left two great clouds of pebbles, sand and dust,which now share the Earth’s orbit, around the Sun. Obviously the emce was a very violent event, we can accept without question that it was the most horrific event to ever take place on this old Earth. But just how long it took for the Earth to establish some semblance of what we would consider normal weather, is a lot more problematic.
Scientists have determined that there was a “fernspike” [A period, during which ferns far out number all other flora.] just above the K-T boundary, or shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct. I can imagine how cool damp breezes blowing off glaciers, near equatorial regions, could provide ferns with their ideal environment. Of course the demise of all those hungry dinosaurs, didn't hurt their chances of having a population explosion either. Much of the Glacier Girdle probably survived the emce with little, if any,modification. The Glacier Girdle was apparently breeched between the Philippines and Antarctica.
Australia and the lands between those two sites appear to have been inundated with giant tsunamis that leveled the lands, and left great mountains of Pacific Ocean Ice in their wake. The face of the Earth between those two points was so modified, that it is hard to even tell exactly where the Glacier Girdle, or the lands, excepting Australia, were prior to emce. There is littledoubt that for a hundred years after emce there were glaciers and great piles of ice at sealevel, in the equatorial regions. In the Temperate Zones, sections of the Glacier Girdle lasted a great deal longer, lingering for hundredsof years. And undoubtedly, would have lasted even longer, perhaps thousands of years in the northern regions, had it not be exposed to the currents of thePacific Ocean, which were steadily growing warmer.
Many land animals survived emce, and lingered foryears, only to slowly die off, and become extinct,simply because they failed to discover a niche, in which they could prosper. And/or because they could not adapt sufficiently, or evolve quickly enough to make themselves a place on the startling new World they now faced. Those animals, which did survive, underwent an extended period of accelerated evolution that stocked our Earth with a wide variety of strange new animals, which differed mightily from their predecessors. If you could totally objectively examine a randomly selected group of land animal fossils that lived before emce, and a similar group of fossils that lived since emce, you might, mistakenly, determine that you were examining fossils from two different worlds.
Scientists have never even addressed, let alone explain, what could have so thoroughly redirected the course of evolution. There is one indubitable fact: No little bump in the side, or even an ice age on Earth could have possibly so radically redirected evolution. Only a dramatic, permanent change in the Earth’s environment could have instigated such an abrupt, permanent change in the course of evolution. Marine species fared no better during emce than land animals. Like some land animals, quite a few marine species may have survived for some time, perhaps even scores of years, while their numbers steadily dwindled, before their species finally became extinct.
During the emce, and during the next couple or three years that it took for theatmosphere to stabilize sufficiently to maintain permanently warm Edens along the equator, nearly 90% of all marine species became extinct. Which is quite comparable to about 85% of the land animal species that became extinct, during the same period. In the end, a total of about 15% of the marine families, and 25% of all land animal families were completely exterminated.
Scientists claimed for many years, that no animal over thirty pounds survived the “comet” that supposedly happened here on Earth. They have fudged a little during the last ten years or fifteen years and now, most scientists believe that the largest animals that survived the K-Tevent weighed around fifty pound.
When we think of extinctions, the awe inspiring dinosaurs, and perhaps those ancient horrifying monsters of the depths that shared their world, usually are the first creatures that light upour minds. But the emce also brought about the extermination of half the groups of tiny Cretaceous plankton, as well as many families of snails, sponges, bivalves, bony fishes and some families of mammals and birds. And that is only some of the faunas [animal life] that become extinct.
The rest of the story is: That about half of allspecies of land and marine floras, [plant life] also became extinct during, or shortly after emce. It is highly probable, that many species of the life that flourished during the Cretaceous, only to became extinct due to the emce phenomenon, would have survived, had the Earth returned to a Cretaceous like environment, after the event. Permanent catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment, is the real reason for the mass extinction. In plain language, had half of the dinosaurs living at the end of the Cretaceous Era survived the emce event, they all would have still inevitably, and quickly, became extinct.
Simply put: Cretaceous Dinosaurs would have had a better chance of surviving in the proverbial Hell, than they had living on the new world the emce created. Catastrophic changes in the Earths environment is truly the mother of all mass extinctions, as well as accelerated periods of evolution. The marine environment, life in what had been the sunlit oceans, suffered as devastating anupheaval as that suffered by the land inhabitants. During and for some time following emce, only the strong and lucky survived.
Just how much ice and waters of the frozen Pacific Ocean and the warm waters of Sunny Hemisphere were merged during emce will neverbe known. But undoubtedly a sufficient quantity, was sloshed together during the first day, to bring about a mass oceanic extinction. Eventually as the dust had settled, and the Sun grew warm, the Glacier Girdle began to melt, and the waters of the World’s oceans continued to merged and began to circulate. The oceans on the Sunny Hemisphere throughout the Dinosaur Era were filled with warm, quite salty, mineral rich, water, compared to the frigid Pacific. Such was the water, in which the marine life of the Cretaceous had evolved and flourished. Once the Glacier Girdle was breeched, and the oceans began to circulate, the heavy, cold, comparatively inert, water from the Pacific Ocean slipped under the warm waters of the Sunlit Ocean and filled the ocean basins with frigid water.
Probably within days, in a few weeks at most,the ocean depths of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans fell from a warm 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit, [16 to 21 degrees Celsius] to near freezing temperatures. Warm Atlantic and Indian Ocean water, teeming with life and spores was lifted, as the coldwater filled the ocean basins, and spread outover the frigid Pacific Ocean water, and planted ancient flora and fauna onto many of the Pacific's warm, active, seamounts.The water in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, below a few hundred feet, simply became uninhabitable to most of the flora or faunathat had evolved in the Cretaceous. As the months and years passed and the oceans’ waters continued to merge, marine life on Earth had but two choices, evolve and adapt, or become extinct. Both on land and in the sea, accelerated evolution soon adapted or replaced that which was, with that which is, and the Dinosaur Era was over. The Mammal Era had arrived.
There have been a hundred of versions, of the above story, published. The theory has been so thoroughly accepted by the scientific community that millions of children around the world have shamefully been taught: It is the reason the dinosaurs became extinct. There is no greater sin in education than presenting some hyped theory to children, as as scientifically proven phenomenon.
Knowledge ceases to grow in minds that have accepted false answers.
The above story was not related because of any probability that it may be true. There are far too few clues supporting the theory, to give it any real credence. Yet the story of the comets approach does clearly allegorizethe actual phenomenon that brought about the dinosaur’s extinction. But the ever brightening light that approached Earth was not a comet, and it could not have possibly paled the Moon with its brilliance. The approaching light was the Moon.
And it passed so near to Earth that its gravitational pull sped up the Earth’s rotation. The earth accelerated from rotating once a year, to rotating once everyday, once every twenty-four hours. No Dinosaurs survived the catastrophic event.
The “Dinosaur Era” was over.
The Earth/Moon close encounter wreaked incredible havoc upon the Earth. The Moon has a diameter of 2160 miles [3,475 kilometers] equal to about one-quarter of 7,926.4 miles [12,7534 kilometers] the Earth’s diameter at the equator. As it brushed Earth on its original orbit, the Moon was probably traveling at a rate exceeding, 40,000 miles [64,360 kilometers] per hour. The Moon’s mean distance from the Earth is reportedly, 238,857 miles [403,668 kilometers].
The orbit is quite elliptical, varying more than 30,000 miles [48,270 kilometers], from aperigee of 216,420 miles [348,220 kilometers], to 247,667 miles [398,496 kilometers] at their apogee. The Moon covers about 716,568 miles [1,152,kilometers] in 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and a second or so, to orbit the Earth. So, the Moon is still circling the Earth at an average speed of about 26,248 miles [40,624 kilometers] per hour.
The distance the Moon missed colliding with Earth is very problematic. But there undoubtedly were many catastrophic phenomena instigated by the emce. Still, it is all vary iffy. There are too many variables: The distance that separated the Earth and the Moon on their first, nearest perigee, and the rate the Moon was traveling, relative to Earth, on its first pass by Earth, is crucial questions. But only time, and a great deal of tedious research, can ever blueprint exactly how, when, or where, all those horrific events unfolded.
That said: In my mind’s eye, the following paragraphs fairly accurately describe some of the Earth-shaking phenomena the emce likely triggered.
As the Moon passed by Earth, Lunar Gravity attracted the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a huge atmospheric bulge, which followed the Moon as it arced around the Earth. This movement of the atmosphere generated winds with velocities far exceeding any, the primeval, placid Earth had theretofore experienced. Winds, which uprooted, leveled, and killed nearly everything in the storm’s path. Wherever the moon passed over land it left a horrific path of total devastation in its wake.
As the Moon passed over water, the same winds that wreaked havoc on land, created mighty storm surges, which flooded any coasts they encountered. The winds racing along under the Moon, at hundreds of miles per hour, undoubtedly scooped up water and carried it thousands of feet up into the air. If any traces of water are ever found on the Moon, we could learn that the Moon acquired that water during its visit to Earth. Yet, the storm surges that preceded the Moon, and flooded far inland, were of little consequence, compared to the tidal waves that followed in the Moon’s wake. Three things contributed to forming the tidal waves; the low water levels left on the Moon’s passing, [Major wind surges, always leave low sea levels behind them] the intense vacuum left in the Moons wake and the gravitational pull of a Moon passing so horrifically near. The three combined forces created a great rush of water that converged in the Moon’s wake, and raced after the Moon. Great tsunamis, hundreds of feet high, following the Moon completely inundated whole continents. Simply put, the gravitational pull of a Moon nearly sucked the ocean-beds dry and pulled that water over nearly everything in its path.
The Pacific Ocean with its Glacier Girdle may have with stood the onslaught to some extent. Though undoubtedly the ice that had covered the Pacific Ocean, for many millions of years was shattered, sloshed back and forth, and in places, heaped into tremendous piles. Prior to its brush with the Moon, our Earth rotated but once a year. Or to put it in perspective, a given dot on the equator moved at about 2.8 miles [4.6 kilometers] per hour. In a very short time, probably less than an hour, the rotation of the Earth accelerated until it was completing a revolution once a day, once every twenty-four hours, until a given dot on the equator moved at about1,037.5 miles [1,169.4 kilometers] per hour, as it does today. [I said about because, the rotation of the Earth is slowing down, and those first days after the dinosaurs died, were shorter than they are now. So the proverbial dot on the Equator was actually moving a bit faster than it is now.]
Although nearly the entire rate of the Earth’s rotation can be contributed to the Moon’s first, and closest, pass by Earth, it is possible that subsequent orbits may have also passed close enough to further accelerate the Earth’s rate of rotation. The Earth’s waters, at least on the hemisphere opposite the Moon, failed to accelerate as quickly as the solid Earth’s crust. The faster the Earth turned, the further the waters receded. Actually, due to the Earth’s spherical form, the water on the Northern Hemisphere receded to the Northwest, and the water on the Southern Hemisphere receded to the Southwest. The end result was, the Earth’s waters circled away from the Equator, toward the Axial Poles. As anything moving centripetally accelerates, the North and South Axial Poles were deluged with centripetally converging waters. Once the Moon had left the Earth’s atmosphere and proceeded on its first orbit, its effect on the Earth’s rotation abated. And the Earth’s rate of rotation stabilized. But, the centrifugal force, generated by the Equator regions spinning, at at thousand plus miles per hour, throw the Earth out of kinetic balance. [The Earth, is still out of kinetic balance. A person, weighing 200 pounds at the North or South Pole, will weigh about 199pounds at the Equator].
Scientists have never been able to explain why the Earth is out of kinetic balance. Gravity is attempting to flatten the Earth at its Poles and increase its girth at the Equator, to reestablish kinetic balance. But crustal plates move very slowly. And lava flows and all other contributing factors add but undetectable smidgens of mass to the equatorial regions. If all contributing factors remain as is, gravity will eventually have its way, and the Earth will slowly be reformed until it regains kinetic balance. In a couple hundred million years more or less, it’s likely our earth may just regain something approaching kinetic balance.
About two-thirds of the Earths surface is covered with water, and centrifugal force drew those waters that had been directed toward the Axial Poles while the rotation of the Earth was accelerating, rushing back toward the equatorial regions. And it was not only, the quantity of water that was previously at the Equator, which rushed back to the region. Centrifugal force contributed somewhere close to another 45 feet, (15 meters) of water to the equatorial regions. Simply put, water like the aforementioned man, weighed less at the Equator than at the poles, and rose proportionately to compensate for the waters that grew heavier toward the Axial Poles.
Diminishing, flood and ebb tides continued to ravage the Earth’s coasts for a week after the emce phenomenon. A short time compared to the atmosphere, which failed to accelerate sufficiently to obtain any real stability for months. For the first week following the Moons passing, east winds far in excess of a hundred miles per hour buffeted the whole equatorial region. The lower atmosphere took months to accelerate sufficiently, for the winds to establish any semblance of wind patterns, similar to those we have today. Ten years after the Moon's first pass by Earth, as it passed perigee it was still creating tides twices as formidable as any suffered on Earth today.
The centrifugal force generated by the whirling Earth after emce, threw our world drastically out of kinetic balance, and instigated many untenable pressure changes on the Earth’s crust. Indubitably, such a sudden, drastic, geological adjustment triggered innumerable earthquakes,and brought on a rash of volcanic activity. Instability of the Earth’s crust was further heightened, and prolonged for many years, as the Glacier Girdle melted, and the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, released from the burden of the glaciers great weight, began to decompress, began to rebound.
It is a bit hard to comprehend how much solid rock can be compressed, and rebound, when subjected to and then released from a great weight. For example, the land around the great lakes is still rebounding, rising, from the compression of the last Ice age. Comparatively speaking, since the Glacier Girdle began melting, we could guess that the compressed rock under it has probably expanded hundreds of feet. But there is little data available to support such a hypothesis. Gravity tests do confirm that the area under the Ring-of-Fire, the area which was under the Glacier Girdle, is still heavier, is still more compressed, than the strata in the adjacent areas. We do know that areas, such as the Great Lakes area, do rebound after being compressed with glaciers. But our knowledge of how much, or how quickly rock formations will compress, or rebound, is very scant. Different types of rock formations probably compress and rebound, at different rates, and in varying degrees. For now, just saying the formations once covered and compressed by the Glacier Girdle, have rebounded a significant amount, and are still expanding is about all we dare declare.
Actually a phenomenon of much greater consequence than the strata under the Glacier Girdle decompressing was initiated when the edges of the crustal plates, which had been tilted down by the awesome weight of the Glacier Girdle, begin to rise, to level. The edges, of both the oceanic and continental crustal plates that meet at the Pacific Ocean shores began to rise. The tilting of these oceanic and crustal plates activated numerous earth quakes and a string of volcanic activity that circled the Pacific Ocean, and ignited the so called, “Ring-of-Fire.” Proof that crustal plates move, tilt very slowly, lies in the fact that the volcanic activity and accompanying earthquakes which encircle the Pacific Ocean, are still very active.
Simply put, shortly after emce the atmosphere established and cleared sufficiently, to enable the Sun to commence thawing the Glacier Girdle. As the Glacier Girdle melted, the edges of the adjacent crustal plates, relieved of their great burden of ice,began to rise. Actually gravity began to slowly re-level the plates and the aforementioned edges have risen continuously until this day. And they are presently still leveling at a rate sufficient to maintain a very active Ring-of-Fire. The lifting of the oceanic and continental plates where they meet at the shores of the Pacific Ocean are also responsible for creating the deep oceanic trenches. Obviously, the Earth’s Crust cracked, for the most part, on the oceanic side of the Glacier Girdle, in the Western Pacific, and on the continental side of the Glacier Girdle, on the Eastern, or North and South American side, of the Pacific. The oceanic trenches were not created by any mysterious,unfathomable force, by any Devil residing deep within the bowels of the Earth. They have simply opened, as the edges of the crustal plates have risen.
Before man made his first trip to the Moon, scientists estimated that the astronauts would find the Moon carpeted with from 6 to 15 feet [2 to 5 meters] of dust. They of course, made that assumption assuming that the Moon had been a companion of Earth for the last four or five billion years. According to our best radiometric tests, the Moon has been around somewhere, and most likely somewhere in our Solar System, for at least close to four billion years. That is time enough to gather a lot of dust, dust that for the most part blew off of the Moon, during emce. This Moon dust is what is responsible for the thin layer of iridium rich dust deposited at the K-T Boundary. The emce initiated many, all most unimaginable horrific phenomenon, besides the total devastation that the Moon left in its wake.
The Moons passing, and the Earth starting to accelerate, spawned a multitude of the most violent storms this old Earth has ever suffered. Nearly all of the dinosaurs, which were alive on Earth during the emce, died a violent weather related death, within a matter of a few hours after the Moon entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Horrific winds picked up grown dinosaurs, like they were so many autumn leaves, and hurled them against giant trees and rocks, and anything else that jutted above the lay of the land, breaking their bones and even dismembering and decapitating some of them, before dropping their lifeless forms alee some geological raise which deflected the wind. Many dinosaurs undoubtedly drowned, or were beaten to death by debris in raging torrents as continents were deluged. The winds, during and shortly after emce, were undoubtedly much less severe above the Forty-Fifth Latitude North, and below the Forty-Fifth Latitude South.
But the floods were more devastating in those Polar Regions. The dinosaurs in those areas were definitely no more fortunate, because there is little doubt, that twenty-four hours after emce, about everything above or below those latitudes was frozen solid. It is possible that some small burrowing animal, which had a snug barrow and a windfall to forage in, could have survived. Likewise, any small creature that lived in a creek fed by awarm spring had a niche, from which it might pass its genes onto a kinder, more bountiful environment.I can imagine, a small opossum like animal wondering aimlessly around, bewildered, in a world that had suddenly turned bitter cold and near lightless, when it suddenly runs into the remains of a five-ton animal. Feeling the warmth still lingering in the giant frame, the little carnivore gnaws through the tough hide, and barrows its way deep into the massive frame. And in doing so, secures an Ark that will carry her,and the tiny young in her pouch, over until an ever brightening Sun starts to periodically shine though the hazy skies. Live is tenacious, yet the really interesting mystery is no longer how the dinosaurs become extinct, but how the survivors, survived.
[Remember: At this time the Axial Poles had not yet begun the shift to their present position.] It is probable that the emce left more dust in the air, than the mythical meteor that killed the dinosaurs, supposedly left. Undoubtedly the emce also spawned numerous earthquakes, and may have initiated lava flows, as well as many volcanic eruptions. And it is very likely that the lava flows and volcanoes added some additional unneeded components to the already hazy skies.
Much of the Moon dust that surely nearly obliterated the Sun from the sky, at least for a short time, was much heavier than volcanic ash, and may have settled rather quickly. And the emce probably lifted large quantities of water, many thousands of feet into the stratosphere, which may have fallen rather quickly, and could have washed much of the dust from the sky. The astronauts said that they found gravel on the Moon, which looked like it had been windrowed, by the wind. During emce, some gravel probably was blown into windrows on the Moon, and some was undoubtedly blown clear of the Moon and fell to Earth. Moon gravel which fell to Earth, may explain the tektites that are strewn across what was the original Equatorial Region.
And of course during emce, is likely when at least some the Moon rocks, which have been found in Antarctica, were dislodged from the Moon’s surface, and fell to Earth. As the Moon entered, and left, the Earth’s atmosphere, it left two great clouds of pebbles, sand and dust,which now share the Earth’s orbit, around the Sun. Obviously the emce was a very violent event, we can accept without question that it was the most horrific event to ever take place on this old Earth. But just how long it took for the Earth to establish some semblance of what we would consider normal weather, is a lot more problematic.
Scientists have determined that there was a “fernspike” [A period, during which ferns far out number all other flora.] just above the K-T boundary, or shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct. I can imagine how cool damp breezes blowing off glaciers, near equatorial regions, could provide ferns with their ideal environment. Of course the demise of all those hungry dinosaurs, didn't hurt their chances of having a population explosion either. Much of the Glacier Girdle probably survived the emce with little, if any,modification. The Glacier Girdle was apparently breeched between the Philippines and Antarctica.
Australia and the lands between those two sites appear to have been inundated with giant tsunamis that leveled the lands, and left great mountains of Pacific Ocean Ice in their wake. The face of the Earth between those two points was so modified, that it is hard to even tell exactly where the Glacier Girdle, or the lands, excepting Australia, were prior to emce. There is littledoubt that for a hundred years after emce there were glaciers and great piles of ice at sealevel, in the equatorial regions. In the Temperate Zones, sections of the Glacier Girdle lasted a great deal longer, lingering for hundredsof years. And undoubtedly, would have lasted even longer, perhaps thousands of years in the northern regions, had it not be exposed to the currents of thePacific Ocean, which were steadily growing warmer.
Many land animals survived emce, and lingered foryears, only to slowly die off, and become extinct,simply because they failed to discover a niche, in which they could prosper. And/or because they could not adapt sufficiently, or evolve quickly enough to make themselves a place on the startling new World they now faced. Those animals, which did survive, underwent an extended period of accelerated evolution that stocked our Earth with a wide variety of strange new animals, which differed mightily from their predecessors. If you could totally objectively examine a randomly selected group of land animal fossils that lived before emce, and a similar group of fossils that lived since emce, you might, mistakenly, determine that you were examining fossils from two different worlds.
Scientists have never even addressed, let alone explain, what could have so thoroughly redirected the course of evolution. There is one indubitable fact: No little bump in the side, or even an ice age on Earth could have possibly so radically redirected evolution. Only a dramatic, permanent change in the Earth’s environment could have instigated such an abrupt, permanent change in the course of evolution. Marine species fared no better during emce than land animals. Like some land animals, quite a few marine species may have survived for some time, perhaps even scores of years, while their numbers steadily dwindled, before their species finally became extinct.
During the emce, and during the next couple or three years that it took for theatmosphere to stabilize sufficiently to maintain permanently warm Edens along the equator, nearly 90% of all marine species became extinct. Which is quite comparable to about 85% of the land animal species that became extinct, during the same period. In the end, a total of about 15% of the marine families, and 25% of all land animal families were completely exterminated.
Scientists claimed for many years, that no animal over thirty pounds survived the “comet” that supposedly happened here on Earth. They have fudged a little during the last ten years or fifteen years and now, most scientists believe that the largest animals that survived the K-Tevent weighed around fifty pound.
When we think of extinctions, the awe inspiring dinosaurs, and perhaps those ancient horrifying monsters of the depths that shared their world, usually are the first creatures that light upour minds. But the emce also brought about the extermination of half the groups of tiny Cretaceous plankton, as well as many families of snails, sponges, bivalves, bony fishes and some families of mammals and birds. And that is only some of the faunas [animal life] that become extinct.
The rest of the story is: That about half of allspecies of land and marine floras, [plant life] also became extinct during, or shortly after emce. It is highly probable, that many species of the life that flourished during the Cretaceous, only to became extinct due to the emce phenomenon, would have survived, had the Earth returned to a Cretaceous like environment, after the event. Permanent catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment, is the real reason for the mass extinction. In plain language, had half of the dinosaurs living at the end of the Cretaceous Era survived the emce event, they all would have still inevitably, and quickly, became extinct.
Simply put: Cretaceous Dinosaurs would have had a better chance of surviving in the proverbial Hell, than they had living on the new world the emce created. Catastrophic changes in the Earths environment is truly the mother of all mass extinctions, as well as accelerated periods of evolution. The marine environment, life in what had been the sunlit oceans, suffered as devastating anupheaval as that suffered by the land inhabitants. During and for some time following emce, only the strong and lucky survived.
Just how much ice and waters of the frozen Pacific Ocean and the warm waters of Sunny Hemisphere were merged during emce will neverbe known. But undoubtedly a sufficient quantity, was sloshed together during the first day, to bring about a mass oceanic extinction. Eventually as the dust had settled, and the Sun grew warm, the Glacier Girdle began to melt, and the waters of the World’s oceans continued to merged and began to circulate. The oceans on the Sunny Hemisphere throughout the Dinosaur Era were filled with warm, quite salty, mineral rich, water, compared to the frigid Pacific. Such was the water, in which the marine life of the Cretaceous had evolved and flourished. Once the Glacier Girdle was breeched, and the oceans began to circulate, the heavy, cold, comparatively inert, water from the Pacific Ocean slipped under the warm waters of the Sunlit Ocean and filled the ocean basins with frigid water.
Probably within days, in a few weeks at most,the ocean depths of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans fell from a warm 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit, [16 to 21 degrees Celsius] to near freezing temperatures. Warm Atlantic and Indian Ocean water, teeming with life and spores was lifted, as the coldwater filled the ocean basins, and spread outover the frigid Pacific Ocean water, and planted ancient flora and fauna onto many of the Pacific's warm, active, seamounts.The water in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, below a few hundred feet, simply became uninhabitable to most of the flora or faunathat had evolved in the Cretaceous. As the months and years passed and the oceans’ waters continued to merge, marine life on Earth had but two choices, evolve and adapt, or become extinct. Both on land and in the sea, accelerated evolution soon adapted or replaced that which was, with that which is, and the Dinosaur Era was over. The Mammal Era had arrived.
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