Darwin's Valentine : Younger Dryas Impact Remnant Near Lake Nipigon?

I have discovered this interesting geological feature just south of Lake
Nipigon, which I offer as a possible Laurentide ice sheet impact remnant
representing the recently hypothesized Younger Dryas or Clovis impact
event, which may (not) have occurred in North America around 12,900 BP.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie...9,1.153564&z=9

This feature consists of a 25 km heart shaped impact butterfly, with a
smaller 10 km depression straddling the northwest edge of the basin.

This area sat squarely on the ice sheet during the period in question,
and would represent an impact remnant juxtaposed onto glacial terrain,
which would have been washed over by several subsequent glacial flooding
events known to have occurred during later Nipigon mel****er runoffs.

The resulting Younger Dryas cooling event which followed is generally
thought to be a result of the opening up of the St. Lawrence seaway as a
new route for vast amounts of glacial floodwaters, along with a northern
route presumably through the Hudson basin which then interfered with the
THC or Thermohaline Circulation. The impact may have been coincidental.
Or it may be the missing link allowing integration of conflicting data.
It would have been a huge hole in the ice on the Nipigon flood plains.

The Younger Dryas cooling is widely accepted as an evolutionary pressure
resulting in the establishment of agriculture onto a neolithic culture.

Or it may be nothing at all. Nevertheless I dub it 'Darwin's Valentine'.

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin! Happy Friday the Thirteenth all you
superstitious religious nuts! I hope an asteroid doesn't hit you.

On Feb 13, 4:28*pm, kT wrote:


Or it may be nothing at all. Nevertheless I dub it 'Darwin's Valentine'.

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin! Happy Friday the Thirteenth all you
superstitious religious nuts! I hope an asteroid doesn't hit you.

I have watched this week as Darwin's birthday is celebrated based on
his so-called law of evolution by borrowing from a commentary on
population and racial supremacy and imposing it on biological
evolution -

"One day something brought to my recollection Malthus’s “Principles of
Population,” which I had read about twelve years before. I thought of
his clear exposition of “the positive checks to increase”—disease,
accidents, war, and famine—which keep down the population of savage
races to so much lower an average than that of civilized peoples. It
then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are
continually acting in the case of animals also..... because in every
generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the
superior would remain—that is, the fittest would survive.… The more I
thought over it the more I became convinced that I had at length found
the long-sought-for law of nature that solved the problem of the
origin of species." Charles Darwin

Charles is jumping on the 'law' bandwagon that started rolling with
Isaac Newton back in the late 17th century and it is refreshing,if
alarming, to see Darwin explicitly state that the core mechanism
driving evolution is from an old-world social study rather than the
whitewashed version of cute finches,harmless lizards and the remote
Galapagos islands commonly promoted by his followers to the wider
population.

The selfish saw Darwin's version of evolution as the thin end of a
wedge by proposing the idea that if you did not affirm Darwin/
evolution then a person must be a creationist and from there into the
present nightmare of science vs religion.Behind it all are the
original biological evolutionary ideas that existed within geological
principles,ideas that preceded Darwin's 'cause' for evolution,there is
no handwringing over religious implications but rather a spectacular
and humble recognition that humanity occupies a much grander and older
planetary stage -

"I would . . . be unwilling to press the theory of relation to the
human race, so far as to contend that all the great geological
phenomena we have been considering were conducted solely and
exclusively with a view to the benefit of man. We may rather count the
advantages he derives from them as incidental and residuary
consequences; which, although they may not have formed the exclusive
object of creation, were all foreseen and comprehended in the plans of
the Great Architect of that Globe, which, in his appointed time, was
destined to become the scene of human habitation."
Rev William Buckland

http://www.strangescience.net/buckland.htm

Scientists ,at least who do not have the intuitive intelligence,offer
humanity a crude choice between Darwin/evolution as an option to
creationism/religion but the Christian is the one who has the choice
in the end,to accept biological evolution as it originally emerged
within the context of geological evolution or to support the
speculative 'cause' of Darwin which reduces life and its diversity to
a branch of chemistry.

Celebrate Darwin ?,I think I'll pass on that one.

Oriel, your understanding of science is zero. The Theory of Evolution, with
natural selection as its primary driving force, was never a "law," nor did
Darwin propose it as a "law," nor does any significant scientist now
consider it to be a "law." You've created a straw-man argument with which
to oppose your own nonsense. In the world of science, acceptance of the
Theory of Evolution and natural selection is nearly universal. Those few
who oppose it -- almost always on religious grounds -- make a lot of noise,
and they give talks at church revival meetings, and they get quoted in
creationist publications, and they get to testify as "experts" for the
defence in courtrooms, but their proportion of the scientific community,
especially among those who've actually studied the evidence, is minuscule.
Why? Because the Theory of Evolution is one of the most thoroughly tested
propositions in the history of science. Even the biochemist Michael Behe,
the science community's main advocate of "intelligent design," accepts an
ancient Earth, common descent and natural selection. He just thinks it
needed some outside help at the beginning. Just because you and your fellow
religious fruitcakes don't like evolution, that doesn't mean it's not true,
and that won't make it go away.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W

Curtis Croulet wrote:
Oriel, your understanding of science is zero. The Theory of Evolution, with
natural selection as its primary driving force, was never a "law," nor did
Darwin propose it as a "law," nor does any significant scientist now
consider it to be a "law." You've created a straw-man argument with which
to oppose your own nonsense. In the world of science, acceptance of the
Theory of Evolution and natural selection is nearly universal. Those few
who oppose it -- almost always on religious grounds -- make a lot of noise,
and they give talks at church revival meetings, and they get quoted in
creationist publications, and they get to testify as "experts" for the
defence in courtrooms, but their proportion of the scientific community,
especially among those who've actually studied the evidence, is minuscule.
Why? Because the Theory of Evolution is one of the most thoroughly tested
propositions in the history of science. Even the biochemist Michael Behe,
the science community's main advocate of "intelligent design," accepts an
ancient Earth, common descent and natural selection. He just thinks it
needed some outside help at the beginning. Just because you and your fellow
religious fruitcakes don't like evolution, that doesn't mean it's not true,
and that won't make it go away.

Any comment on the hypothesized Nipigon impact crater remnant? That
thing sticks out like a sore thumb up there. It took me all of three
minutes to locate it, once I decided to actively start looking for it.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie...9,1.153564&z=9

I suppose I'll have to start calling up interested geologists and start
bugging them like some kind of crackpot. That's usually how it works.

I suppose I'll have to start calling up interested geologists and start
bugging them like some kind of crackpot. That's usually how it works.

An impact crater on Earth is called an "astrobleme." A brief web search for
information on an astrobleme in the Lake Nipigon area brought up nothing
specific. But I did find this interesting 1998 paper concerned with
petroleum exploration:

http://www.parwestlandexploration.com/docs/og.pdf

Page 2 has a map of astroblemes on the Canadian Shield, and one of them
looks like it's in the area of your proposed astrobleme.

If I were you, aside from web searches, I'd contact (e-mail or snail-mail)
the geology department of a university in the area. Look at the websites of
the major universities. Lake Superior State University, Sault-Ste-Marie,
MI, looks like a candidate, for example. An e-mail contact at the bottom of
the page I'm looking at is . They brag about the Even if
nobody there is studying astroblemes in Ontario, they may be able to put you
on the trail of an expert. If you're of a scientific bent, then you should
have no trouble crafting a message that will be read and treated
courteously.

I just found an interesting looking slideshow (which I've not yet looked at)
on the LSSU website: http://turnstone.ca/lsup.htm
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W

Sorry -- I left an incomprehensible sentence fragment in my post. I was
going to comment that the LSSU geology department's website brags about the
quality of their geosciences department. LSSU sounds to me like a possible
place to get leads on astroblemes near Lake Superior.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W

Curtis Croulet wrote:
I suppose I'll have to start calling up interested geologists and start
bugging them like some kind of crackpot. That's usually how it works.

An impact crater on Earth is called an "astrobleme." A brief web search for
information on an astrobleme in the Lake Nipigon area brought up nothing
specific. But I did find this interesting 1998 paper concerned with
petroleum exploration:

http://www.parwestlandexploration.com/docs/og.pdf

There are lots of archaic 'astroblemes' up there, the PGM and uranium
people have been looking at them closely for some time now, and I was
simultaneously reading all of the relevant Pleistocene geological papers
while I was doing this short (as it turned out) search for the crater.

It happens that I have met Peter Barnett during one of his field trips.

Page 2 has a map of astroblemes on the Canadian Shield, and one of them
looks like it's in the area of your proposed astrobleme.

Here is the list, I don't see that one listed.

http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDataba...meterSort2.htm

I believe that is marking the Slate Islands astrobleme.

This would rightly be called an astrobleme anyways, it's rather an ice
sheet crater remnant. It's an impression left by the impact surge in the
ice, simply dropped out during the subsequent catastrophic flooding, and
then heavily modified by the subsequent catastrophic flooding during the
Nipigon phase of the ice sheet collapse several thousand years later.

As it turns out, the so called Eastern outlet of Lake Agassiz was
thought to be through some highlands to the west of Thunder Bay, and
that scenario has generally been refuted :

http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/Fa...20Research.htm

I was mistaken thinking the Nipigon phase was in that era, but it has
now been placed several thousand years later, but that certainly doesn't
rule out any earlier impact induced flooding at a much earlier date,
since most of the original impact and associated remnants would have
been washed away by the subsequent flooding, and melting of the ice.
What I am imagining is water rushing down a hole in the ice, widening it
greatly, and then scouring those cliffs into bedrock Canadian shield,
and then filling the basins in with flood sediments.

Here is the RealClimate thread which precipitated my thinking on this :

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...switch_lang/zh

And my original publication of this result is at the bottom.

That was my thinking, if there was a large impact on the ice sheet,
there should be some remnant of that event impressed upon the glacial
terrain resulting from the impact, melting and flooding on the ice.

I'm from Southern Wisconsin and the Bahamas, this was very easy for me.

If I were you, aside from web searches, I'd contact (e-mail or snail-mail)
the geology department of a university in the area. Look at the websites of
the major universities. Lake Superior State University, Sault-Ste-Marie,
MI, looks like a candidate, for example. An e-mail contact at the bottom of
the page I'm looking at is . They brag about the Even if
nobody there is studying astroblemes in Ontario, they may be able to put you
on the trail of an expert. If you're of a scientific bent, then you should
have no trouble crafting a message that will be read and treated
courteously.

I'm sure the Younger Dryas impact people would be the most interested,
it's quite possible that they just haven't gotten around to looking yet.

I just found an interesting looking slideshow (which I've not yet looked at)
on the LSSU website: http://turnstone.ca/lsup.htm

I suppose I'll have to start emailing and calling around Monday morning,
given the dramatic outline of this feature, and ease of identification,
I really do think I've nailed it. You can't possibly miss that thing,
and it's right where it should be, and looks just like it ought to look.

Sounds like you know more about it than I. Good luck!
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W

On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:52:45 GMT, "Curtis Croulet"
wrote:

Oriel, your understanding of science is zero. The Theory of Evolution, with
natural selection as its primary driving force, was never a "law," nor did
Darwin propose it as a "law," nor does any significant scientist now
consider it to be a "law." ...

I agree with your intent, but I'd say this: there is no such thing as
"The Theory of Evolution". Evolution is an observation- essentially a
fact. There are a number of true theories to explain the observation,
and all are derivatives of the theory of natural selection.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

BTW, I agree: the dot on the map in the petroleum exploration paper looks
like the Slate Islands structure.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W