Mid Atlantic Unexpected Geology

Map From David Pratt Compounded from Russian Authorities

This chart shows various types of continental type rocks and sediments associated with the Atlantic Ocean bottom as pointed out by critics of the plate tectonics theory, and including finds of rovck that are "Too Old" to have come from the younger seafloor generated by seafloor spreading. And the answer is that the younger rock makes up most of the floor of the ocean beds but that continental drift is not neat and it leaves "Crumbs" some of these crumbs are quite substantial island platforms or "Minicontinents" and the probability is that the "Atlantis" area near the Azores contains such "Crumbs": Lava from the Azores volcanoes includes the continental types of lavas, not only the oceanic types.

UNEXPECTED GEOLOGY OF THE ATLANTIC FLOOR

There are several articles on the formation of the Azores islands which speak of it: the Atlantis books by Otto Muck and Zhirov both record some of the subsidences, many of which are marked by corals which need to grow near the surface now found at depths of 2-3 kilometers down or more. ALL of these subsidences must date to a process beginning at the end of the Ice Age because in some cases the volcanic rock would degrade over a longer length of time. We also have the remnants of the lava from this last event strewn over the entire North Atlantic floor and the layer is directly datable to the end of the Ice Age, and the sediment covering the stratum is of Holocene (Postglacial) age.

The really major part of the evidence is that it was initially assumed that all of the midocean ridges of the world were generating seafloor spreading by means of active magma chambers down the middle. Further investigations turned up the odd fact that while the East Pacific rise has a proper domed-up cross setional profile the Mid-Atlantic ridge does NOT: it has a caved-in profile with once again a subsidence of 2-3 kilometers indicated. And most recently of all came the big shock: The Mid-Atlantic ridge has blown out nearly its entire magma reserve and the magma chamber under it is nearly empty and nearly completely inactive. The magma chambers on the mid-ocean ridghes are typically located about 3 kms down as determined by soundings: blowing out the chamber would logically lower the ridge 3 kms as well.

One source you can give is:
http://www.le.ac.uk/geology/art/gl209/lecture2/lecture2.html

About halfway down there is a section which includes these statements:

Not every ophiolite has all these   components complete, and it is not always for tectonic reasons. Often the gabbro   is missing, or the sheeted dykes, and in some cases the dykes may intrude the   harzburgite. Of course sheeted dykes can only be formed if there is a continuously   extending magma chamber (try doing it without!). So if sheeted dykes are missing   it may mean that there has not been such a magma chamber. In fact there is a   lot of debate on this issue. Some geophysical studies indicate a possible continuous   magma chamber beneath the East Pacific Rise. However, the EPR is a smooth fast-spreading   ridge, and maybe there is enough thermal input to keep a continuous magma chamber   going. On the other hand in the slow-spreading Atlantic with its central rift   valley and irregular topography, there is no direct evidence for a continuous   magma chamber. Some workers, including those at Leicester, suggest that with   slow-spreading ridges, each eruption may be a distinct event, and that any magma   chamber is only short-lived. Some sections of the Atlantic ridge, like the FAMOUS   area (south of the Azores) have numerous small volcanic cones, and this is now   being recognised all over the Atlantic.
A consequence is that that there   may be a variety of magma chamber profiles, with those from fast-spreading ridges   having fat "onion" shapes, those from rather slower-spreading ridges having   "leek" shapes. Very slow spreading ridges (e.g. SW Indian Ridge) may just have   dykes feeding lavas which directly overly peridotite. There are ophiolites with   this profile, where the dykes cut harzburgite tectonite and gabbro is only locally   developed. Even with the type Troodos ophiolite, which has a moderatley thick   gabbro section, geochemical studies have shown that the gabbros are in fact   a compound of a number of small bodies.

[The shapes are evidently successive stages of the full magma chambers bleeding dry over time. As noted, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge seems to currently be continuing without any large magma chamber left-DD]
Transform   Fault Effects

It has long been known that the ocean   crust is much thinner in the vicinity of oceanic transform faults. Also that   a greater variety of rock types can be drilled or dredged in the vicinity of   transforms, and that there is usually a significant topographic difference between   the two sides of a transform fault (esp. the larger ones).
The latter effect arises because   the ocean crust sinks as much as 3 km over the first 30 m.y. of its existence.[ie, after the new sheets of rock are extruded at the central rift area-DD]   So the greater the age difference of adjacent bits of ocean crust across a transform,   then the greater the height of the transform wall. Obviously if the wall is   1 km high, then a large amount of rubble will fall down onto the lower plate,   and deeper parts will become exposed. Moreover as the transform fault moves,   the movement can deform the basalts into hornblende schists.
[Emphasis Added: the statement should be made that the sinking occurs "Within" the stated millions of years and not "Over". We do not have direct evidence for the actual timing of the sinking, we can only verify the fact of the sinking-DD]

BTW, confusing the fact of Atlantis' sinking at the end of the Ice Age is the clear evidence we have there WAS a catastrophe of considerable proportions at the end of the Bronze age also, and we DO have evidences for the tsunami it generated on both sides of the Atlantic. There is the general problem with the dates involved and several authors have also called into question the entire framework of accepted chronology at the time (Not only in Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos but also now more mainstream objections which tend to confirm parts of his reconstructed chronology)

The real objection to that part is thart Plato ALSO clearly mentioned that catastrophe and made a distinction between the two catastrophes, making it clear tht he counted a lapse of many thousands of years between the two. He even counted the two as different types of catastrophe, the Atlantis catastrophe being a deluge and the Bronze Age one being a catastrophe of "Fire from the sky". The way he explained the theory left no doubt as to the fact that there were two types of catastrophe and that they were several thousand years apart, he gave an exact date in thousands of years which related to his theory that both types of catastrophes happened cyclically over the greater span of the Great or Platonic year, the Precession of Equinoxes cycle. Which is something in excess of 24 thousand years long. The Egyptian year is three seasons long and each "Season" of the Great Year cycle was eight thousand years long": and you were supposed to get a destruction by fire in the "Summer" and a destruction by water in the "Winter" of the Great Year. The Egyptians maintained they had records which demonstrated observations of a full Precession cycle and a half had gone by: That is roughly as far back as Marshak's Cromagnons were supposedly making Astronomical tallies. My guess is that the Egyptians were interpreting rock art and the rock are does include depictions of constellations: and they were good enough Astronomers to figure out the rates of change in celestial bodies (So were the Mayas for that matter) And over that period they claim to have observed "Several" catastrophes: the Mayans say Four Worlds. The Egyptian Mythology does hint that the world is destroyed periodically but is re-created at the original Sacred Mound, which is the first part of the Earth to re-emerge from the waters.

Incidentally the mythic material that went into Plato's Atlantis dialogues is as old as Egypt itself, and part of the material can be traced to the documents known as The Pyramid Texts (According to an article by John Douglas Singer in PURSUIT.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703703008937

Profiles of the Mid-ocean ridges: a is Atlantic and b is Pacific.

As you can see, the collapsed profile of the Mid-Atlantic ridge is clearly discernable and it is a major collapse of a few kilometers vertically (or generally something in the realm of one or two miles of vertical collapse, for thousands of miles North to South) Below is an illustration of how the rift was supposed to have formed: we can infer that it is actually an excellent model for the collapse of the Mid-Atlantic ridge and the sinking of Atlantis. This is not a universal occurance-the Pacific ridge did not blow out and did not collapse at this time, although an earlier Pacific rise seems to have collapsed at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and possibly another such incident occurred at the end of the Permian. If this is so, the association of these collapses with mass extinctions is striking and it could be significant.

Once again, the formation of the rift valley in this diagram is analogous to the sinking of Atlantis (and you can also see how the crumbs might be left behind) but this is an idealized composite diagram. In other words, the end result is typical of the Pacific ridge system with its high magma plume and fast spreading center generating a lot of new ocean crust (It may actually be doing this in fits and starts and "Pulsing", by the way; and violent vertical movements up or down could also be part of the "Pulsing") As noted above, the Atlantic version of this crossection has the high active magma plume gone and the ridge collapsed and inactive as a result.

The Atlantic seafloor again, and we can still make out the prominently large Azores platform area which has been dragged down by the collapse of the Mid-Atlantic ridge.
Belowm the Lucky Strike area explored by OCeanographers with a particular view as to the area's geology: Several structures are above-sea-level, subaerial lava flows. For one thing the "Lava Lake" is mostly a large flat lava pool, not like a submarine eruption in the form of deposit: those "Lambda" marks indicate subaerial types of basaltic volcanic debris (Breccia as indicated by the key) SOME of the lava structures are formed under water and hence are more recent than the land-like lava flows: in paricular the lighter grey patch toward the bottom right is a marine deposit, and beside it are a couple of small fields of submarine pillow lavas. That is of course a very small part of the larger field which was mapped and indicated here.

A map of suspicious island platforms and continental-type geology. These areas could all be those "Crumbs" left behind by continental drift: some researchers call them "Minicontinents" and they include Bruce Heezen, from whose informaton this chart was constructed (in part) Atlantis is not unique, there are many such areas now submerged in the oceans of the world, and the Atlantis area is not a particularly striking or large example. Most of these areas do not lie flat but are crumpled up and down to different depths by the process which sank them, and the Azores/Atlantis area is similar in that respect.

Many geologists independantly insist on a general downfaulting of the ocean beds at the end of the Pleistocene. Forrest (The Atlantean Continent, 1933) insisted that not only Atlantis but the entire North Atlantic floor sank three kilometers relative to the land areas at the end of the Ice Age: and several "Flood Geologists" likewise say something of the same nature. I am not insisting that the bottom fell out of the entire North Atlantic, but in fact that is a legitimate scientific theory and it IS possible that the ocean depths actually did sink down some hundreds of feet vertically after the continental ice sheets melted and the meltwater ran back into the sea: and the land also subsequently rebounded and regained altitude. So that basically at the end of the Ice Age there was a worldwidwe change in amplitude in the difference between the heights of the continents and the depths of the ocean bottoms. This was to different degrees in different areas but was most noticeable in the areas of the former continental glaciers. And the North Atlantic seabed had continental glaciers on either side so the change in vertical relief was more pronounced there.

Pico Alto in the Azores, probably the original "Mount Atlas" of Atlantis (according to Otto Muck and others). In Atlantean times it would be a much higher mountain and that cloud ring larger, higher and more pronounced, so that it would be eay to imagine the mountain was holding up the sky.