Ancient mangrove forests discovered under coral reef - proof of rapid sea rise 9,000 years ago

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) researchers have opened a window into the past by exposing ancient mangrove forests entombed beneath the Great Barrier Reef.

AIMS biologist Dr Dan Alongi said the expedition was surveying the impact of nutrients on coastal inshore areas when scientists unearthed mangrove forests in old river channels they believe may snake for 30 kilometres to the edge of the continental shelf.

Scientists have long theorised that sea level rose very gradually over several thousand years, but these remnant mangrove forests tell another story.

While it was previously known that relic river beds exist beneath the Great Barrier Reef, formed 9000 years ago when the sea level was lower than the continental shelf, their significance was never studied.

"When we took the first samples it was difficult to believe… we stood amazed wondering what exactly we were dealing with. We thought it was cyclone debris, but it was far too deep to be a modern event," said Dr Alongi.

AIMS researchers cored 1-2 metres of sediment and found remnant mangrove 70 centimetres below the surface of the present seafloor.

These core samples of mud are an evolutionary time frame. The evidence will help to establish the state of the reef and nutrient sediment information as it existed prior to human activity.

Dr Alongi said the mangroves were incredibly well preserved; a fact most likely attributed to the antibiotic properties in the concentrated tannins. "The cores still have the characteristic smell of tannins, that’s why we thought they were young.

"Within the cores were intact root systems and parts of trees including twigs and branches that radiocarbon dating put between 8550 and 8740 years of age.

"There’s such an abrupt change in core composition from mud-like substance to intact mangrove branches…from the modern to the ancient, that it suggests a large climate change happened," said Dr Alongi.

www.aims.gov.au...

I dont recall ever hearing about this discovery

we now have a more precise date of 8550-8740 years ago, when SHT planet causing rapid sea rise...

perhaps a meteor or ?

There is a 'bridge' between new guinea and australia that is exposed from the sea time to time. It is on this that (scientists allege) migrations of humans and other animals have occured.

Migration was achieved during the closing stages of the Pleistocene, when sea levels were much lower than they are today. Repeated episodes of extended glaciation during the Pleistocene epoch, resulted in decreases of sea levels by more than 100 metres in Australasia. The continental coastline extended much further out into the Timor Sea, and Australia and New Guinea formed a single landmass (known as Sahul), connected by an extensive land bridge across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait. Nevertheless, the sea still presented a major obstacle so it is theorised that these ancestral people reached Australia by island hopping. Two routes have been proposed. One follows an island chain between Sulawesi and New Guinea and the other reaches North Western Australia via Timor.

wikipedia

The sharing of animal and plant species between Australia-New Guinea and nearby Indonesian islands is another consequence of the early land bridges, which closed when sea levels rose with the end of the last glacial period. The sea level stabilised to near its present levels about 6000 years ago, flooding the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea.

It think the 3000 years between when the OP article says the mangroves are dated (9000 years ago) and the time when the sea 'stabilised' to it's current level(6000 years ago) is plenty of time for mangroves to at least thrive and potentially fossilise. Is it?

Potentially a meteor couild have caused this, but my feeling is that is is just natural longer cycle tidal influence rather than a single event.

I remember when the big tsnami happened in asia that in south australia the tide went out for a good three days before it came back. I think to get fossils there would need to be a longer sea level change than a meteor shockwave.

[edit on 26-6-2009 by ivycutler]

Uh, isnt this thanks to the end of the last ice age?

reply to post by king9072


The melting ice sheets caused the sea level to rise more than three hundred feet. They did melt quite rapidly, and there are suggestions that a string of comet collisions with the Earth caused the quick meltdown. I would think a collision would of brought up dust in the air and caused the temperature on the planet to cool down, causing the ice age to last even longer. It is possible the comets hit the ice shield itself, causing the quick meltdown, but no one knows for sure.

[edit on 6/28/2009 by kidflash2008]

reply to post by kidflash2008


Or perhaps an overactive sun cycle and it's accompanying radiation warmed the atmosphere enough to melt the ice caps.

I suppose it could
happen again.

That's kind of close to the Biblical flood time frame. Thus this information will be suppressed as quickly as possible, just as most of the other information that supports the Biblical account. Things like the fossils of giants, or fossils that show man and dinosaurs alive at the same time, etc.

reply to post by kidflash2008


every one knows it was caused by man then as it is now.
the cart becoming the new form of transport and the amount of greenhouse gasses being released was unprecedented in the history of man.

we cannot blame a natural cycle, otherwise this whole global warming scam will be seen for what it is, a scam

reply to post by SevenThunders


dont you find it strange that the roman catholic church is one of the richest and influential religions out there and yet they still keep things hushed up???? dont you think it would be in in their best interest to PROVE the existence of these facts??? after all it would mean a bigger congregation and thus more followers and more money and more power. and yet they keep all these facts hidden away in museums and the Vatican and who knows where else. the only conclusion that i can come to is that the potential loss is far greater than the potential gain. in if thats the case as i suspect it is then this proves that the history we are being told is a lie. i dont deny that fact that there were giants living on earth or that the flood happened. i just think they didnt exactly happen the way the shurch says it did or that the giants are who the church say they are.

just food for thought.

reply to post by TiM3LoRd

It's been well-known that sea levels have been rising for the past 20,000 years since the last glacial maximum (ice age), so it's not really a "secret" that these mangrove forests existed.

There have been many cyclical rises and lowerings of sea level over the Earth's history in roughly 20,000 to 25,000 year cycles. This is perhaps caused by cyclical changes in the Sun's output or perhaps the Earth's "precession" (a "wobble" in the Earth's rotation that has a 26,000 year cycle), or perhaps the past and present cyclical sea level changes are caused by a combination of both solar output and precession.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


the secrecy i was referring to has nothing to do with the discovery made about the mangrove Forrest. it was a reply to another users post regarding the possibility that it MIGHT be hushed up. i am neither amazed nor surprised at the discovery. i am a firm believer that what we know and what we THINK we know are 2 completely different things.

Originally posted by SevenThunders
That's kind of close to the Biblical flood time frame. Thus this information will be suppressed as quickly as possible, just as most of the other information that supports the Biblical account.

sorry to disappoint you but this shows that the sea was lower 9000 years ago and permanently rose to it's current levels. this doesn't change the scientific chain of events it just changes the speed at which they happened.

mangrove to mud, couldn't a river have simply silted up? this can happen in a decade. is a rapid sea level rise the only answer possible? is there other evidence from around the world?

I believe that this is the causative event.

When the Earth Nearly Died
Compelling Evidence of A Catastrophic World Change 9,500 BC
(c) 1995 by By D S Allan and J B Delair. 386pp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Republished in 1997 as
"Cataclysm : Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B. C."

"When the Earth Nearly Died carefully documents the fascinating story - which has never been told before in such detail - of how this Golden Age of peaceful conditions and equable climates ended traumatically in a tremendous catastrophe about 11,500 years ago. This was part of a cataclysm which disturbed the whole solar system, destroyed at least one sizable planet and its satellite, and also severely devastated Mars and Earth.

Among the fundamental geophysical effects experienced by Earth were a massive fracturing of the crust, a realignment of Earth's axis, elevation of new mountains, and widespread rearrangement of land and sea. These changes were accompanied by an appalling global conflagration, a gigantic flood, and what has been described as 'collapsed sky' conditions. A bombardment by debris from the disintegrated satellite of the destroyed planet added to the worldwide chaos.

Much of Earth's animal and plant life was annihilated by these frightful events. Remains were often buried hundreds of feet below and within vast new deposits which smothered huge areas, both on land and under the sea. Elsewhere they lay piled in caves, choked rock fissures, or were massed into veritable hills. Some havens and refuges did exist, offering shelter to various faunal and floral species from flood or fire - then to have to endure the appalling conditions which followed. These included intense cold, occasioned by chronic atmospheric pollution which severely restricted the solar radiation reaching the Earth, loss of vital resources such as shelter, tools and sources of warmth and nourishment. The extent of the damage was so great that the immediate survivors found themselves literally catapulted into what was, in effect, a new world"

Earth Nearly Died

I have this book.
It does lay out a plausable scenareio. The eveidence is there. There are folk tales from around the world describing it.
It was not the end of an ice age, but the beginning, and it was sudden.
You have read about the mammoths found in Siberia with what was fresh greens in their stomachs and between their teeth.

This and lesser events were eventurally rolled into one and written in the bible, altho this event would make Noah's flood look like a spring shower.

Originally posted by TiM3LoRd
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

the secrecy i was referring to has nothing to do with the discovery made about the mangrove Forrest. it was a reply to another users post regarding the possibility that it MIGHT be hushed up. i am neither amazed nor surprised at the discovery. i am a firm believer that what we know and what we THINK we know are 2 completely different things.

I see that now... my mistake.

And yes -- I agree that there is still so much we need to learn. It does disturb me, however, how every new discovery man makes is overshadowed here on ATS by conspiracy theorists who think "The Powers That be" had the knowledge all along and was simply suppressing that knowledge from the common people.

I find these discoveries very interesting, but ATS is an awful place to find out detailed information about those discoveries because the real scientific information gets lost in all the babble about conspiracies to hide the truth.

[edit on 6/30/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by TiM3LoRd


Well I'm in a bit of a minority in that I view the Roman Catholic church as a satanic cult. Thus they would be in on any fact suppression, just as they slaughtered thousands who dared to read the Bible in the Middle Ages.

Genuine christianity is a threat to any power structure since it acknowledges an authority higher than the state or the church, namely Jesus Christ. Also the radical teachings of love your neighbor as yourself and love your enemies is inimical to the operation of a slave state.

I can't believe I missed this thread last month! That's amazing. Imagine diving around there! If the expose all the mangrove roots, it would be so interesting to see!

Those trees are almost 9000 years old. If it wasn't for that nutrient survey, they would never have found any of this! Very awesome evidence.