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The Sahara Desert and Plato's Atlantis


Mario Dantas

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I love the marine reptiles and ancient sea life.

There are probably fossils in the depths of some amazing lifeform we will never find.

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Now that was funny, but one really has not to be versed in all the disciplines he wishes to address, especially within a holistic kind of understanding. A multidisciplinary approach perhaps needs more logic than knowledge...

M

So you admit, then, you don't actually /know/ what you're talking about?

I mean, everyone who's not you already knew that. I'm just surprised that you'd admit it and thereby discredit anything you've ever said.

--Jaylemurph

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We'll take your continual avoidance to answering this as proof you never did as you said you did - something not at all unexpected!

You asked whether i posted links to sites where i already posted. No, i never posted links to websites where i have posted. Why the capital letters? why the aggressiveness?

Maybe i should point out that of all the possible interesting questions to be asked, that is one of the least interesting...

And i am not avoiding anything!

M

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Given 99% of all life that has existed on Earth is extinct, we should be literally falling over fossils, we're not. fossilization is a staggeringly rare occurrence.

True, but nonetheless, many of the fossils found and many of those we haven't discovered yet, may have been generated by the Atlantean demise.

There is also the fossil fuel itself...

A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock and subjected to intense heat and pressure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

Petroleum is a fossil fuel derived from ancient fossilized organic materials, such aszooplankton and algae.[47] Vast quantities of these remains settled to sea or lake bottoms, mixing with sediments and being buried under anoxic conditions. As further layers settled to the sea or lake bed, intense heat and pressure build up in the lower regions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

M

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You asked whether i posted links to sites where i already posted. No, i never posted links to websites where i have posted. Why the capital letters? why the aggressiveness?

Because you refused to answer the question before so I made sure you didn't skip over it again

And i am not avoiding anything!

Actually you did, were and are...... but no matter we now have our answer, you never post your ideas to other websites as you previously claimed.

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True, but nonetheless, many of the fossils found and many of those we haven't discovered yet, may have been generated by the Atlantean demise.

Mario when exactly do you think Atlantis existed you seem to be struggling with the relative placement of geological events with regards to Plato's story.

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Because you refused to answer the question before so I made sure you didn't skip over it again

Actually you did, were and are...... but no matter we now have our answer, you never post your ideas to other websites as you previously claimed.

? Sorry i did not understand what you are saying. You say you have now the answer to what?

M

Edited by Mario Dantas
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True, but nonetheless, many of the fossils found and many of those we haven't discovered yet, may have been generated by the Atlantean demise.

Not unless there were Dinosaurs living on Atlantis.

IIRC the most common fossil found in Africa is a type of rodent from the Cretaceous.

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? Sorry i did not understand what you are said. You say you have now the answer to what?

M

Yep

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Mario when exactly do you think Atlantis existed you seem to be struggling with the relative placement of geological events with regards to Plato's story.

Exactly when Plato stated Atlantis did disappear, "nine thousand years ago" or around 10 to 12.000 BC.

One could say Plato placed Atlantis between the Pleistocene/Holocene, at the end of the last ice age...

M

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Exactly when Plato stated Atlantis did disappear, "nine thousand years ago" or around 10 to 12.000 BC.

One could say Plato placed Atlantis between the Pleistocene/Holocene, at the end of the last ice age...

M

Then why are mentioning geological processes that are 100's of millions of years old as evidence for Atlantis?

Edited by Hanslune
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Exactly when Plato stated Atlantis did disappear, "nine thousand years ago" or around 10 to 12.000 BC.

One could say Plato placed Atlantis between the Pleistocene/Holocene, at the end of the last ice age...

M

That's like saying "Australia is between the Arctic and Antarctic Circles".

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Then why are mentioning geological processes that our 100's of millions of years old as evidence for Atlantis?

Mario /said/ he didn't know what he was talking about earlier: why are you hassling him?

--Jaylemurph

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Yep

After eight hours of working like a maniac, that is all you have to say? :no:

M

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Then why are mentioning geological processes that our 100's of millions of years old as evidence for Atlantis?

What geological processes are you talking about? The Sahara is well within Plato's Atlantis demise time-frame, as the end of the ice age is also....

M

Edited by Mario Dantas
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Mario /said/ he didn't know what he was talking about earlier: why are you hassling him?

--Jaylemurph

Just checking....

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After eight hours of working like a maniac, that is all you have to say? :no:

M

My reply was in regards to your avoidance of an earlier question

? Sorry i did not understand what you are saying. You say you have now the answer to what?

M

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That's like saying "Australia is between the Arctic and Antarctic Circles".

Plato posits Atlantis within the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary:

The Pleistocene has been dated from 2.588 million (±.005) to 11,700 years before present (BP), with the end date expressed in radiocarbon years as 10,000 carbon-14 years BP.[4] It covers most of the latest period of repeated glaciation, up to and including theYounger Dryas cold spell. The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to about 9640 BC (11,654 calendar years BP).

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pleistocene

Things are never really that exact in geology, or within geologists...

M

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Composition of Saharan dust and its possible source regions – a review

D. Scheuvens1 , L. Schütz2 , K. Kandler1 , M. Ebert1 and S. Weinbruch1 1 Institut für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Schnittspahnstraße 9, TU Darmstadt, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany 2 Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Universtiät Mainz, Becherweg 21, 55128, Mainz, Germany

Keywords: Saharan dust, source identification, composition.

The Sahara is the strongest source on earth for mineral dust, supplying up to 109 t per year of material to the atmosphere (about 50 % of the total mineral dust burden). Saharan dust is subject to longrange transport and may be transported over thousands of kilometers (e.g., across the Atlantic Ocean). The exact consequences of Saharan dust input into the atmosphere are still a matter of debate (Heintzenberg, 2009), but it is generally accepted, that the introduction of mineral matter into the atmosphere has large impacts on the global radiation balance (direct and indirect forcing), thus influencing the climate system from a global to a local scale. Furthermore, the uplift, transport and settling of Saharan and Sahelian dust significantly changes the terrestrial and oceanic systems in the regions of dust entrainment and settling. Hence, a better knowledge of the potential source areas in the northern part of Africa may lead to an improvement of (paleo)climate models. We have compiled the available bulk analysis data (mineralogy, elemental and isotope composition) of Saharan and Sahelian aerosols and soils in order to distinguish source regions with specific compositional characteristics.

Region 1: Atlas region The bulk mineralogical data of dusts that originated in the Atlas region clearly shows a general high amount of carbonates (with calcite > dolomite) in good agreement with the geology and the outcropping soils. Dusts from the Atlas region are also characterized by the highest illite/kaolinite ratios in northern Africa (> 2.0). Furthermore, palygorskite has been detected in many soil samples in this area and may be also present as an additional marker in the uplifted dust. The high carbonate content and the low content of Fe-bearing minerals (hematite, goethite) of the potential source sediments leads to very low Fe/Ca ratios in the dust. Based on the available isotopic data (Grousset et al., 2005), a further sub-division into a northern Atlas source region with lower 87Sr/86Sr ratios (< 0.725) and higher ƐNd(0) values (> -15) and a southern Atlas source region with relatively high 87Sr/86Sr ratios (> 0.725) and low ƐNd(0) values (< -15) is possible.

Region 2: Libya, Egypt Compared to the Atlas region, dusts that originated in Libya or Egypt are characterized by a lower but still significant carbonate content and a scarcity of palygorskite. Illite/kaolinite ratios show a general decrease from west to east and hence are relatively low in NE Africa (< 1.0). ƐNd(0) values of potential source sediments in Libya and Egypt are of the same order as the ƐNd(0) values of source sediments from the northern Atlas source region, but show increasing values from western Libya (< -15) towards Egypt (> -11). More diagnostic are the low 87Sr/86Sr ratios (< 0.720) that are characteristic for source sediments from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Region 3: Sahelian region (Chad, Niger, central Mali, Mauritania) The most characteristic criteria for the Sahelian (or Sub-Saharan) region are the general absence of carbonates and palygorskite in the analyzed soil and dust samples and the very low illite/kaolinite ratios of < 0.5. Again, on the basis of the isotope data this very large potential source region can be sub-divided into an eastern sector with lower 87Sr/86Sr ratios (< 0.720) and higher ƐNd(0) values (around -12) and a western area with higher 87Sr/86Sr ratios and lower ƐNd(0) values (around -15).

Region 4: southern Algeria, northern Mali This area is located in an intermediate position between the Sahelian and Atlas region. Dust and soil samples from this area exhibit relatively low illite/kaolinite ratios (c. 0.5), clearly discriminating it from samples from the Atlas region. Calcite contents are variable, probably depending on the exact location of dust entrainment. Palygorskite is generally rare. Isotope data is scarce, but 87Sr/86Sr ratios are probably higher than 0.720 and extrapolated ƐNd(0) values fall in the range between -15.0 and -12.0.

http://www.gaef.de/eac2009/EAC2009abstracts/T05%20AA%20specific%20aerosol%20types/T052A17.pdf

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Fossil abundance can only mean one thing, quick burial with sediments...

In fact, it does not - and I'm speaking from the standpoint of someone who's been volunteering at paleontology labs for over 10 years.

Fossil abundance can refer to:

* microfossils (as in foraminifera and other microscopic sea life)

* small fossils (clams... the deities love clams. There are zillions of them, from every geologic era.)

* layers with good preservation (generally oceanic layers)

* pockets of fossil groupings (the bend of a river where animal carcases ended up after several floods and were buried by sediments.)

In this case, ancient whales are found in some of the areas of the Sahara... but "abundance" (one of my paleontologists did some work on them) means "relatively easy to find." That could mean "one bone per square mile on the average" or less.

The end of the last Ice age is kind of a scientific "sacred" initial threshold for the SAhara to come into existence, which might explain what Plato was talking about..

It would appear that you are NOT familiar with the length of time it took for the Sahara to grow to the size of today (thousands of years, and not "overnight.")

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All very interesting and I'm bursting to participate but am short on time at the moment.

Mario, I did think of the Sahara back in 2008, I forget what's in most of this (tongue in cheek) named thread I started. I was finding Atlantis everywhere at that time, but feel some info from it will be useful to you.

I should read it again, my views have evolved and changed a lot in 7 years, but the basis is there still.

http://www.unexplain...435&hl=atlantis sahara&st=0

Edited by The Puzzler
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Modern research explains mythical Lake Tritonis as the Chotts megalake.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk...s-Megalake.aspx

chotts1.jpg

The three "tines" of "tritonis" form a nearly straight line, moreso than traditional images of Poseidon's pitchfork.

The catchment area of this basin-plain was 814,000 square kilometers (including the mountain-side portions).

Edited by atalante
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The end of the last Ice age is kind of a scientific "sacred" initial threshold for the Sahara to come into existence....

Mario, you couldn't be more wrong. Previous evidence of the age of the Sahara Desert showed it was at least as old as our genus Homo and even then it may be pushed further back to around 7 million years based on the paper "Aridification of the Sahara desert caused by Tethys Sea shrinkage during the Late Miocene (18 September 2014)".

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v513/n7518/full/nature13705.html

cormac

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Modern research explains mythical Lake Tritonis as the Chotts megalake.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk...s-Megalake.aspx

chotts1.jpg

The three "tines" of "tritonis" form a nearly straight line, moreso than traditional images of Poseidon's pitchfork.

The catchment area of this basin-plain was 814,000 square kilometers (including the mountain-side portions).

...has "modern research" failed to read the notes attached to those images?

U/Th daing of these deposits suggests that a giant lake existed at numerous times during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, most notably at about 30, 95-100, 130-150 and 180-200 ka (Richards and Vita-Finzi, 1982; Fontes et al, 1983; Causee et al, 1988; Causse et al, 2003).

In other words, although there are temporary lakes there, the last time that there was a lake there was 30,000 years ago. That's about 20,000 years before the imaginary Atlantis. The longest time periods when it was a lake was 100,000 years ago and 200,000 years ago.

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