http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/americas/chile-earthquake/index.html
8.3 off Chile —watch out, Hawaii, et al.
by CJ | Sep 16, 2015 | Journal | 20 comments
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Latest warning message from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center… http://ptwc.weather.gov/text.php?id=pacific.TSUPAC.2015.09.17.0122
We’re off the hook, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says we may get some strong and unusual currents and surges, but we most likely will not get any big waves. Chile, OTOH…
http://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id=hawaii.TSUHWX.2015.09.17.0350
Same here in SoCal: one foot. Nearby in Chile, 15+ feet. Ouch.
Forks, WA, is out on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. It has broad-band seismometers there that are tuned to distant earthquakes. Here are the tracings, for the initial shock on the 16th, and the “ringing” and aftershocks on the 17th.
Try this one if it IS the morning of the 17th when you look.
Not to alarm anyone, but…
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
Yes; I think that this got brought up a few weeks ago. People along the Washington-Oregon coast and in along the rivers and tidal zones will be in a world of hurt. Elsewhere, depending on geometry, it may be “Run for the hills!” or not. It’s been quiet for long enough in that area people have largely forgotten what it means that the Cascades are an active fault and subduction zone, complete with volcanoes.
If you happen to be on waterside in downtown Seattle and get a big shake, do not hesitate over the knicknack in the Old Curiosity Shoppe—go outside and start running up any of the streets that connected with the piers. They’re very steep, so you don’t have to go more than a block or so to be above the disaster line, but if you’re not a fast sprinter, head for a building and head upstairs. Washingtonians are pretty well-informed on the local faults, but it’s a tourist zone. My own rule is—if the locals are running in a given direction, don’t stand and ask why.
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/30/these-kits-turn-your-prius-into-an-emergency-generator/
Good Nova program: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365559270/
They’ve found a couple of new species between Australopithecus and human. One is 1.9 million years old. The other appears to be near the same age, from development, and was discovered in what seems to be a burial cave–ie, they had culture.
Noting that. First thought is that flood could have crammed more modern bones back into the rear of the cave, but they were apparently in order. A cave-in trapping them there is another possibility, gradually eroding or settling to give us access. The access was difficult, an up and down with a narrow wicket at the top if it’s the one I’m thinking of—they had to get small women to do the dig because men wouldn’t fit through the gap, if I have the facts right.
That’s the one, but the initial discoverers were two young (from my perspective 😉 ) skinny guys. It showed some video from the helmet cam of one of them in the chamber–that was what got the PI all excited. Part of the qualifications for the women, that those guys didn’t meet, was archaeology experience, so they’d be able to extract the fossils without destroying them.
Like you, I wasn’t buying the idea that these hominids made their way there for “burials” if that cave hadn’t changed over the past 2 megayears! Without LED miner’s lights, lugging a dead body? Laughable!
Over 2 million years, the lay of the land may have changed a lot. Part of how the cave was found was (seemingly random) digging with dynamite for limestone. So, I think some of the difficulty was that they didn’t want to further disturb the site.
They discuss that the bodies found were a “cemetery population”: infant mortality plus usual adult mortality. None of them show marks from predators or falling injuries, unlike the Australopithecus remains, which are also discussed.
Evidently the ages of the skeletons is more in line with burials (predominantly children and oldsters) rather than what would be found if it was a cave-in (all ages represented). I’ve been following this in several science journals.
No, not they were all killed by a cave-in, but that access may have been much different a million years ago, and “rearranged” by a cave-in blocking the original route. I even like CJ’s idea (AIUI, that they may have been deposited elsewhere in the cave and been washed over the “dragon’s back” and through the slit by a flooding incident) better than that they were originally “buried” way down in there. How? Ever tried to carry a dead body? (Well, me neither, but I understand it is surprizingly hard.)
Bet on it, the surface topography of any karst area will definitely be a lot different today than it was 2 million years ago. Think about what goes on in Florida today; sinkholes open up overnight and what was once on the surface of the earth isn’t any more. Same thing happened in my front yard this summer too; we think it was an old dry well that washed out during a heavy rain, but a 6″ diameter steel pipe disappeared into a hole that was 7 feet deep by 14 feet across.
In a cave breakdown (loose rocks and boulders) will shift about over the years as well, and if the cave takes a lot of water something that is near the entrance could be washed a lot deeper in. My cave geology is rusty since it’s been 40 years since I was an active caver and I haven’t read the book I ordered from the NSS on the subject yet. While I was watching the Nova/Nat Geo program on Wednesday I was wishing I knew what the cave had been like when and if it was used as a burial site.
I read some of the articles on this new species (with, wow, a lot of individuals found!) and find the skeletal details very unusual: some very modern skeletal characteristics (upright with modern gait) but small, small cranial capacity. Not to mention the modern behavior of intentional deposition for the dead. Quite flummoxing. I’m waiting for actual dates to the skeletons before I buy into “this is new ancestor in human line” claims. I also agree with others here that there must have been other ways to access the cave than the current, contorted entry method.
Weren’t they much smaller as adults than we are? That makes a real difference as to what is difficult and contorted.
Lucy was, considerably. But she was an Australopithecine. The “odd thing” I noticed in the reconstructions is how deep their chest is. (Well, besides having almost no neck.) I question if they could get their torso through a 7″ gap.
As I recall they were smaller, but barrel-chested. Their arms reached about to their knees, but their hands and feet were very human-like. One comment on the show was that it was as if they were evolving into humans from the edges inward.
Their brains were only slightly larger than chimps, but brain mass doesn’t seem to be as much of a determiner of intelligence as we once thought. Bigger animals have bigger brains without being smarter than us (we think), while the little brains of African Grey parrots are quite intelligent.