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Re: Kerguelen Plateau



Lost for now. In the future, technology WILL enable us to
get down there yet. So nothing is truly "lost". I'm an optimist,
by the way. One other thing. Where is this plateau you speak of ??

________________________________________
From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu <owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu> on behalf of Jason 
Brougham <jaseb@amnh.org>
Sent: August 22, 2015 7:19 PM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Kerguelen Plateau

I just learned that the subantarctic Kerguelen Plateau, a submerged 
microcontinent that is over 1 million square kilometers in area (or 3 times the 
area of Japan), has been found to have Cretaceous plant fossils, and was 
probably populated by dinosaurs. Even though our current climate is a glacial 
period, with much lower sea level, the plateau in question is now 1 to 3km 
beneath sea level. Apparently, the original chain of volcanic islands subsided 
and eroded a great deal, leaving just a few small (younger) islands above the 
water today.

Ocean drilling in 1988 returned charcoal, macrofossils, and microfossil spores 
and pollen. There was a forest with a canopy up to 30m, and it included 
podocarps, tree ferns, seed ferns, understory ferns, mosses, liverworts, 
lycopods, sphenophytes, cycads, and rare non - pododcarpaceous conifers and 
angiosperms.

There are strata from the Late Jurassic Tithonian right up through the 
Maastrictian.

So that really is a lost dinosaur Atlantis!

http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/120_SR/120TOC.HTM