Nexus - 0504 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Fig. 14 trapped in the polar zone. The highlighted areas in the present Arctic Circle mark lands which were once temperate. In our book, When The Sky Fell, we showed how Arctic Norway, north- ern Alaska, Beringia and Siberia were much warmer before 9,600 BC than they are today. These lands exhibited temperate condi- tions where it is now much too cold to support such animals as hyenas, sabre-toothed tigers, antelope and the whole menagerie of species that we associate with East African terrain. whole crust had once undergone an abrupt displacement. You can imagine how excited I was! I only wished Hapgood had lived to see his ideas being applied to another planet. To support the idea of a crustal displacement on Mars, Dr Peter Schultz of Brown University examined the planet's craters. > Yi Asteroids or comets that impact within the polar zones exhibit co. A characteristic crater signatures because they land on thick deposits 8 “5 i. of dust and ice that accumulate only at the poles. Schultz scanned Fig. 14 Vee = Mars in search of craters exhibiting these polar features outside the polar zones. He found two such areas, and wrote: trapped in the polar zone. The highlighted areas in the present These zones are antipodal: they are on the opposite faces of Arctic Circle mark lands which were once temperate. In our the planet. The deposits show many of the processes and book, When The Sky Fell, we showed how Arctic Norway, north- characteristics of today's poles, but they lie near the present- ern Alaska, Beringia and Siberia were much warmer before 9,600 day equator. BC than they are today. These lands exhibited temperate condi- Now if the "antipodal" argument is offered as evidence of tions where it is now much too cold to support such animals as crustal displacement on Mars, then we should at least consider it hyenas, sabre-toothed tigers, antelope and the whole menagerie of here on Earth. So let's look at the former position of the Earth's species that we associate with East African terrain. crust in the southern hemisphere. In figure 18 we see the southern areas which are opposite or efore I take you to the southern hemisphere, I want to take antipodal to those in the north. The area in the southern Indian B you on a quick trip to Mars. In December 1985 I read an Ocean is antipodal to the lakes that occupy most of Canada. In article in Scientific American which explained a series of this area lies the still-ice-covered Heard Island. The ice-sheet on mysteries about the surface of Mars by assuming that the planet's Heard Island cannot be explained by current snowfall patterns. Heard Island is antipodal to the Canadian province of Saskatchewan which was under ice 12,000 years ago. Both areas exhibit polar features (ice or melted ice in the form of lakes) in a temperate zone. This fits the antipodal criterion used as evidence for a crustal shift on Mars. Greater Antarctica has so much ice because it remained inside the Antarctic Circle both before and after the Earth's crust shifted. And the area of thickest ice on Greater Antarctica is opposite to the ice- sheet on central Greenland. Lesser Antarctica is antipodal to the areas in the north, such as those in Arctic Norway, Alaska, Siberia and Beringia, which were teeming with temperate-adapted creatures. I spoke a moment ago about the differ- 56 = NEXUS JUNE - JULY 1998