Ancient Plant Remains Discovered Two Miles Below Greenland Ice Sheet;Questions Iceage theories

Scientists conducting ice core drilling in North Greenland were recently shocked to recover a core sample from two miles below the surface that contained blades of grass and pine needles. So what's the big deal about finding grass and pine needles under two miles of ice? Can't we find grass and pine needles all over the place? The big deal is that present day theories about how the Ice Age took place describe it as a slow process that took thousands of years, meaning that when ice slowly formed over the land, there's no way there would have been pine needles and blades of grass still thriving. What this core sample reveals, however, is that the ice sheet must have formed very quickly

www.redicecreations.com...

When I was a child I would picture the earth's poles in the oceans and having the poles shift causing massive floods then when the poles reoriented themselves its possible that the newly submerged land slipped under the floating ice in the present north and south pole locations.



[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

The ice starts as snow which does not melt from year to year. The pine needles and grass are from the last time that spot of land saw the sun. Interesting and I hope they do a Carbon 14 test on that plant matter. About the pole shift: they happen gradually.

Originally posted by stikkinikkiAbout the pole shift: they happen gradually.

Thats what they said about the ice in greenland....
What the discoveries are showing is that the ice came very suddenly or atleast alot more suddenly that previously thought. You know stories of animals frozen with food in their mouths etc.

I woundnt go asfar as to say sudden pole shift for that is just theory but something happened quite dramatically the evidence shows. What? is the question.




edit to add: Mabey a mega tsunami launched ancient arctic ice ontop of land?

Interesting is there is some discussion goin on about the authenticity of some maps that report to show antarctica without ice in some areas which brings the question of the age of the ice filled South pole.

If I were to drop a million year old ice ontop of your car. How old is your 1988 corolla?

[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

The source for this does not state who the scientists were, or what research venue their affiliated with. When you click on the link of the original source, it goes to a site that requires a paid membership. Can the OP supply who the scientists were and out of what university they're doing their research?

Originally posted by IvanZana


Thats what they said about the ice in greenland....
What the discoveries are showing is that the ice came very suddenly or atleast alot more suddenly that previously thought. You know stories of animals frozen with food in their mouths etc.


If I were to drop a million year old ice ontop of your car. How old is your 1988 corolla?

[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

Who's to say that the plants are not millions of years old and encapsulated under the ice since that time? If you live where it snows then you know the snow covers up the leaves of fall only to reveal them when it melts in the spring. The leaves will look pretty much as they did when the snow fell on them because their breakdown was slowed to a near stop if not a complete stop.

The thing about the animals is interesting. They could have been blasted by an intense cold front that caught them by suprise and maybe they were trying to eat food to stay warm up until they couldn't move anymore. They could also have been caught in an intense icestorm that didn't unfreeze until the animal died. Then again, maybe sever cold air from the troposphere did get sucked down to ground level like in the movie "The day after tomorrow".

reply to post by IvanZana



I believe the maps in question may be the "Piri Rice" maps and some dude "Finius" no doubt someone will correct me here.

The topic is heavily discussed here -www.grahamhancock.com/news

The Website itself is a result of Hanocks' efforts to raise awareness of some very important questions in relation to human history such as the topic of your post, in his book Fingerprints of The Gods.
Heres a clip with Hancock being interviewed on C2C dicussing ice age and such





[edit on 10-12-2008 by moocowman]

Your original source is re-reporting a story that is almost 5 years old (and your source didn't check the dates so they're dressing it up as "new news.")

For one of the original stories, see this BBC article. It shows the plant material which is brownish and shredded and not at all in the condition that the article cited suggests. Furthermore, it was found below an ice sheet... not a moving glacier:
news.bbc.co.uk...

When reporting on a news article, the best FIRST thing to do is "check the date."

I'm sure there's several scientific papers on what they found and how old it is.

Originally posted by Toromos
The source for this does not state who the scientists were, or what research venue their affiliated with. When you click on the link of the original source, it goes to a site that requires a paid membership. Can the OP supply who the scientists were and out of what university they're doing their research?

Noticed that, I have provided some additional information from an additional source.

Also, consider that just this past July of 2004, plant material consisting of probable grass or pine needles and bark was discovered at the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet under about 10,400 feet of ice. Although thought to be several million years old, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and NGRIP project leader noted that the such plant material found under about 10,400 feet of ice indicates the Greenland Ice Sheet "formed very fast."38 Beyond the obvious fact that such types of organic material suggest an extremely rapid climactic change and burial by ice, the question is, Why hasn't such organic material been stripped completely off Greenland by now by the flowing ice sheets? For instance, we know how fast these ice sheets move - up to 100 meters per year in central regions and up to 10 miles per year for several of Greenland's major glaciers. Given several hundred thousand to over a few million years of such scrubbing by moving ice sheets, how could significant amounts of such organic material remain on the surface of Greenland?

naturalselection.0catch.com... Recently Green Greenland?

www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk...

[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

i thought it was shown by frozen mastadons that temperature dropped within seconds to like -70˚C, as the meat was flash frozen and perfectly preserved. the mastadon i'm thinking of was frozen while still chewing on some grass.

i was under the impression that ice ages come VERY suddenly(after a period of natural global warming, which affects the ocean currents, which in turn affects the air currents)

Howdy billybob

i thought it was shown by frozen mastadons that temperature dropped within seconds to like -70˚C, as the meat was flash frozen and perfectly preserved. the mastadon i'm thinking of was frozen while still chewing on some grass.

Hans: No, sorry that is a myth. A large number of animals have been found frozen but all show decay from having frozen slowly. Some did have plant matter in their digestive tracks but that is normal. Nothing was 'flash frozen'. There are a number of threads here that deal with this in detail.

i was under the impression that ice ages come VERY suddenly(after a period of natural global warming, which affects the ocean currents, which in turn affects the air currents)

Hans: Suddenly in the sense of geological time, at this time it seems that these changes took place over centuries and perhaps decades

reply to post by billybob


Here you go in reference to your query

www.talkorigins.org...

www.talkorigins.org...

reply to post by Hanslune


thanks!

Originally posted by Hanslune
Howdy billybob

i thought it was shown by frozen mastadons that temperature dropped within seconds to like -70˚C, as the meat was flash frozen and perfectly preserved. the mastadon i'm thinking of was frozen while still chewing on some grass.

Hans: No, sorry that is a myth. A large number of animals have been found frozen but all show decay from having frozen slowly. Some did have plant matter in their digestive tracks but that is normal. Nothing was 'flash frozen'. There are a number of threads here that deal with this in detail.

There have been finds that were quickly frozen. Some of these different causes of the deaths of frozen mammoths and other animals, have been caused by
•Sinking in muddy silt
•Drowning/burial in flash floods carrying a heavy load of silt.
•Predation, followed by winter freezing, followed by burial in silt carried by snowmelt
•Fall in a landslide, as a thawed riverbank gives way under the animal's weight. The landslide and subsequent soil creep can bury and preserve the animal.

But a global flash freeze i dont agree with either. It is possible that a meteor or mega volcano changed the earth's climate so drastically that some parts of the earth that was once warm became so cold that it could of been a year if not months before most of the animals met their end.



[edit on 10-12-2008 by IvanZana]

Good followup research, Ivan... and thanks for that!

I think the question that's in my mind is "how fast is 'fast'?" I deal with paleontologists, and a "fast die off of a species" is "10,000 years." I don't think we're talking a year or two, here, but I don't know what timespan they're considering.

I believe Ivanzana is talking about individulas, not species.

If an individual mastodon were to die in winter, then you could expect it to freeze within a day or two if it was really, really cold.

That's fast enough to preserve everything mentioned.

Mostly, digestion ends at death, as digestion requires a constant flow of enzymes and acids, especially if the Mastodon had a full belly.

Elephants rarely digest all their food even when they're alive. Check out their feces at the zoo.

Or, perhaps do not and simply take my word for it!

Harte

reply to post by IvanZana


GREAT FIND!

More evidence to support the Biblical flood story and the Biblical story of the whole Earth having one climate pre-flood.

reply to post by billybob


You're mistaken on the grass but correct on flash freezing and the stomachs do continue to work after death, ask any coroner.

The mistaken part is the grass, it was seeds of a certain flower that were found in the mouth, and scientists know when in the season those flowers produce seed...

Except that pre-flood the whole Earth had one climate so seeding times now do not absolutely line up with then.

I dont agree with the 'slow pole shift theory' for one simple fact - buttercups were found in the stomachs of whooly mammoths. A) how could they freeze so fast that their flesh and the buttercups were perfectly preserved? B) Buttercups do not grow in those regions but regions further south. (not just seeds or grasses, but actual intact buttercups).

There are far more examples than this i could site but that may take us off topic.

Yes i read this thread before posting, but no I do not believe in some of whats said (seems to illogicly fit an illogical arguement that continues to be told to us as being true)

Good addition to the sudden pole shift theory (which i subscribe to) Ivan

"""But a global flash freeze i dont agree with either. It is possible that a meteor or mega volcano changed the earth's climate so drastically that some parts of the earth that was once warm became so cold that it could of been a year if not months before most of the animals met their end. """

It wouldnt be a global flash freeze but localized at the 'new poles' as the 'old poles' melted while in their new position. A comet or large meteor could possibly be a catylist for this, though i must admit the actual mechanism for such as yet remains a mystery... (the north pole was once located at the Hudson bay, hence the nice circular depression)

A question (since we all are going slightly off topic) How did the vegetation described in the OP freeze and become preserved? slowly? how did it grow there in the first place then? it DOES sound eerily similar to the mammoths in the arctic...



[edit on 10-12-2008 by Grock]

[edit on 10-12-2008 by Grock]

[edit on 10-12-2008 by Grock]

Pole shift? Magnetic pole shift? The north magnetic pole is kind of sliding around all the time. Do you mean magnetic pole reversal? The last one happened about 750,000 years ago. There is no evidence or reason to believe that magnetic pole shifts have anything to do with glacial periods.