Atlantis-like landscape found under sea sediment

[Judi Lynn]

July 11, 2011 1:07 PM
Atlantis-like landscape found under sea sediment
By Wynne Parry

(Livescience.com) Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies.

"It looks for all the world like a map of a bit of a country onshore," said Nicky White, the senior researcher. "It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the seabed."

So far, the data have revealed a landscape about 3,861 square miles (10,000 square km) west of the Orkney-Shetland Islands that stretched above sea level by almost as much as 0.6 miles (1 km). White and colleagues suspect it is part of a larger region that merged with what is now Scotland and may have extended toward Norway in a hot, prehuman world.

History beneath the seafloor

The discovery emerged from data collected by a seismic contracting company using an advanced echo-sounding technique. High pressured air is released from metal cylinders, producing sound waves that travel to the ocean floor and beneath it, through layers of sediment. Every time these sound waves encounter a change in the material through which they are traveling, say, from mudstone to sandstone, an echo bounces back. Microphones trailing behind the ship on cables record these echoes, and the information they contain can be used to construct three-dimensional images of the sedimentary rock below, explained White, a geologist at the University of Cambridge in Britain.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/11/scitech/main20078461.shtml

[MyrnaLoy]

1. cool story but

when we say Atlantis-like without knowing what Atlantis may have looked like then it belittles the message. That's like saying my backyard is Atlantis-like.

[TheMadMonk]

2. A land which disappeared beneath the waves. The similie is accurate. /nt