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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