Scientists Drill into Ancient Coral Reef Beneath Seafloor ǀ Fossilized Ancestor of Great Barrier Reef ǀ Quest for Answ. A voyage to the outer edges of Australia's Great Barrier Reef has brought back pieces of an ancient, fossilized ancestor to the vast, living ecosystem. This fossilized coral reef was alive about 20,000 years ago, during the height of the last glacial period, a time when Earth was around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is now, and the city of Chicago was buried beneath an ice sheet almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) thick. By studying this ancient coral, scientists are hoping to put together the most accurate picture yet of how sea levels have changed over thousands of years, data that can help inform projections of how sea levels may change in the future.
Getting to the ancient coral, a sort of great-great-grandfather to the Great Barrier Reef, posed a challenge; it lies on and below the ocean floor. Mythology's MythingLinks: Common Themes / Floods & Rainbows: Mythologies & Science. MYTH*ING LINKSAn Annotated & Illustrated Collection of Worldwide Links to Mythologies,Fairy Tales & Folklore, Sacred Arts & Sacred Traditionsby Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.
Common Themes, East & West: Floods & Rainbows:Mythologies & Science22 April 2001: sections on Northern Lights, Green Flash, & St. Elmo's Firehave been moved to my new Fire: Sacrality & Lore page;the "General Weather Lore & Science" section is now on my new Air: Sacrality & Lore page. Author's Note:Late morning, Thursday, 30 December 1999 -- HOME PAGEMy complete Site Map is on the Home Page.If you have comments or suggestions,you'll find my email near the bottom of my Home page. This page created with Netscape Gold 3.01.Technical assistance: William WeeksText and layout copyright © 1998-2010 by Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D. Credits: background is from Mermaid's Rest Graphics.
Noah’s Flood. It all began in 1971 as a game of speculation - a bit of light relief from the rigours of tectonic and oceanographic investigation in the Mediterranean basin.
American oceanographer Bill Ryan was on the scientific team which showed that the Mediterranean had been a vast desert basin until, 5 million years ago, the world’s oceans rose and burst through the Straits of Gibraltar to create the Mediterranean Sea. Walter Pitman was helping to found the new science of plate tectonics. Ryan and Pitman’s British associate John Dewey (now Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford) put up an ingenious idea - could a similar cataclysmic flooding of a massive basin account for the Biblical Flood - a catastrophe of such enormity that it would remain in human memory down the ages? If so, where might it have taken place? The idea never went away and 20 years later, in 1991, Ryan and Pitman began their search. The Black Sea became a vast fresh-water lake. Watch Horizon - Noah's Flood 1/5 Online.
Gilgamesh flood myth. The Gilgamesh flood myth is a flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Many scholars believe that the flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who utilized the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis.[1] A short reference to the flood myth is also present in the much older Sumerian Gilgamesh poems, from which the later Babylonian versions drew much of their inspiration and subject matter. History[edit] The earliest Sumerian Gilgamesh poems date from as early as the Third dynasty of Ur (2100–2000 BC).[4] One of these poems mentions Gilgamesh’s journey to meet the flood hero, as well as a short version of the flood story.[5] The earliest Akkadian versions of the unified epic are dated to ca. 2000–1500 BC.[6] Due to the fragmentary nature of these Old Babylonian versions, it is unclear whether they included an expanded account of the flood myth; although one fragment definitely includes the story of Gilgamesh’s journey to meet Utnapishtim.