La Brea Tar Pits

I saw them when I was a kid...and now and then in visits to the Museums...all my life...and it's a wonder!...if there was list of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World...this would be on it...as it really makes you wonder.

What happened is there were these tar pools and rain water would settle on the surface and give the illusion of a pond...animals would come to drink...and get trapped in the tar. That's one wonder...and the other is that their bones were preserved in the tar perfectly...tons and tons of them all stuck together...brb...

http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Lagerstatten/rancho_la_brea/fanflo.html

Southern California seems to have had the climate of Monterey and the Big Sur Coast during the ice age...the tar record goes back 38 thousand years, I think...

And Predators account for ninety per cent of the animals...maybe they were chasing squirrels who were light enough to get across!!

And one female human of about nine thousand years ago...

Man vs. wild on...ones I've seen but there fun to watch again!!

quote

All saber-tooth mammals lived between 33.7 million and 9,000 years ago

unquote...from wiki on sabre tooths...pic too...which is mural at La Brea...

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Saber-toothed cats ranged throughout much of the world during the last Ice Age. The sabertooth has been recovered from many sites in both North and South America. The scimitar cat had an even wider distribution. It is known from Africa, Eurasia, and North America. Both the sabertooth and scimitar cat have been recovered in the midwestern U.S.
Both types of saber-toothed cats went extinct approximately 11,500 years ago.

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/smilodon.html

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DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

What Happened to the Mammoths?

Between ten and fifteen thousand years ago is in the mix of my thinking with this Ages of Man bit...

And National Geographic had a documentary on about a possible meteor strike in the North American glaciers that did the Dinosaure extinction thing...but this time knocked out the big mammals...

They didn't mention those lakes...which is this time frame...and attributed too to a strike on the ice shield...

But what happened to the Mammoths in Russia...brb...

quote

Mammoth remains have puzzled scientists and laymen for hundreds of years. Many explanations have been offered. One of the most popular hypotheses is that one eventful day, the hairy elephants were peacefully grazing on grass and buttercups when suddenly, tragedy struck, and millions of them froze instantly.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i3/mammoth.asp

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It's the scarist of the mysterys, I'd say...brb...well..I read that whole site...and the author suggests large dust storms...which could well happen with a drop in sea level...large areas of continental shelf silt...

This at the site caught my eye...

but I cant snag it!...protected somehow...but it gives a list of the other animals found with the mammoths...big and small...and of course the plants...most of these are still about...for the most part it was the big ones with their predators that went extinct...tomorrow the Tar Pits...

next show was about dog breeding...save that one for another time!!

pic from wiki imperial mammoth site...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Acorn Eaters

Watched election news awhile...then Frontline about industrial hazardous workplaces...oh...Hawass and the Niagra mummy was on again...dont know what''s next...back to election news...oh...missed ncis...like that show...

But the Acorn Eaters...the ancients had a notion of the past as different ages...the Ages of Man...and if I remember right...the first age was the Acorn Eaters...brb...well...here's one version from Metamorphoses...

quote

Earth herself was untouched by hoes and free from the wounds of plowshares, but she gave forth crops of her own will. Men were happy to gather meals that grew without compulsion: tree strawberries, the mast of mountain beeches, dogwood berries, blackberries from their thorny thickets, and the acorns which fell from Jupiter's broad-spreading oak.

unquote

another one

quote

And happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,

Confin'd their wishes to their native shore.

No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,

Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:

Nor swords were forg'd; but void of care and crime,

The soft creation slept away their time.

The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,

And unprovok'd, did fruitful stores allow:

Content with food, which Nature freely bred,

On wildings and on strawberries they fed; 140

Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,

And falling acorns furnish'd out a feast.

The flow'rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign'd:

And Western winds immortal spring maintain'd.

In following years, the bearded corn ensu'd

From Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.

From veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;

And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

unquote

Ovid's Golden Age...

And it must have been hereabout when the Indians gathered acorns...and that wasn't that long ago!...there's a grinding rock over at the Lower Falls...a popular place to clamber...

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Site CA-Mrp-240/303/H. Site CA-Mrp-240/303/H is located directly west of Yosemite Creek and north of Yosemite Lodge in the Lower Yosemite Fall area. Seven stationary milling features (large stones or bedrock used for the processing or milling of foods) with a total of 63 mortar cups and three milling slicks (smooth parts of a stone where grains were milled) have been recorded at Site CA-Mrp-240/303/H, while sparsely scattered obsidian tools and debris are apparent on the surface and below the surface (Hull et al. 1998).

unquote

I think these are the boulders...and where the History Signs are...and which are controversial as there's is some question about the Miwoks and the Paiutes and just who all, Indians wise, lived in the Valley!

here's the nps page on the Backyard!...neat...

http://www.nps.gov/archive/yose/planning/yfalls/ch3.htm

tomorrow..onward with the Ages of Man!...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Lake Yosemite

During the glaciers there was a lake here in the Valley...

Web news about cold weather in China...Christian news channel had story too...watched antique road show...now doc. on Grand Central Station...train stations are lonely...that solitude of people coming and going...the Valley has a bit of that...I watch tourists getting on and off the buses...from all over they come and...return...oh...the Christian channel had a good bit on integrated churches..Martin Luther King was quoted as saying that the most segragated day in America was 11 am Sunday..."all equal before the Throne"...even in respect to gender...which is a ponderable!!

anyway...about the Lake...time wise...brb...oh...and note this fellow...Joseph "Snowshoe" Walker...well the Sherwin glacier did most of the work...and the walls are so verticle because of something called 'verticle joints'...the granite breaks off in verticle sheets...and the Valley is flat because it's the bottom of Lake Yosemite...I think the Valley was very swampy until Clark blew a hole in the morrain...and that swamp the last of Lake Yosemite...just how long ago the Valley was actually a lake is a question...fifteen thousand years ago it would have certainly been...Whitney had it in his head to the day he died that Glaciers couldn't have made the Valley...instead he thought earthquakes had dropped the bottom out...it's hard to grasp how slow the Glaciers are...the Sherwin glaciation lasted like three hundred thousand years...and there were lesser ones later....there are things I dont understand...like the rubble atop Mt. Dana..and it's said Hoffman was broken apart by the Glaciers....but these were very near the top and I dont see where that grinding weight came into play...even in the Valley...how everything is sheared off top to bottom...but that "verticle joint" thing seem to be the "plug" to stop any leaking thinking!!...lemegoread some more...brb...oh..a link to a good site: http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/student/gunther2/yosemite.html

and here's one about the joints...above the Falls, Yosemite Creek tends to follow joints...http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/geologic_story_of_yosemite/final_evolution.html

Oh...this site explains the undulations...UNDULATING SURFACE below Clouds Rest....it's like it is scalloped...and it can be seen in Half Domes shape too...I wondered about it...this is a very good site...found looking up Mt. Dana's rubble top...which I've yet to find explanation...but it explains the jagged peaks in the High Country...Vogelsang...Ragged Peak...brb...well...in defense of Whitney!...

quote

Yosemite Valley, in spite of its profound glacial modification, is not a good place to see much direct evidence of glaciation. The Tioga glacier only reached as far as Bridalveil Meadow, where its terminal moraine, although well exposed in a roadcut (fig. 74), is relatively inconspicuous, and lateral moraines are absent. Glacial polish and striations are scarce, but they can be seen on a low, flat shelf of rock near the base of the north valley wall opposite the west end of the Yosemite Lodge, and along the base of the cliffs on the north side of the Tenaya Lake Trail, about 500 to 1,000 ft east of Mirror Lake. Glacial polish also occurs in such places as on the slope of the Glacier Point apron, but these localities are accessible only to the experienced climber. This paucity of direct evidence is probably the basis for Josiah Whitney’s stand against the glacial origin of Yosemite Valley, noting as he did the glaciation of Hetch Hetchy Valley, where he described glacial polish at least 800 ft and a glacial moraine 1,200 ft above the valley floor.

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and here Mt. Dana is explained...how neat!!

quote

These upland surfaces did not totally escape the effects of glacial climate. Cycles of freezing and thawing broke the bedrock along fractures and heaved it into a mass of jumbled blocks. Such rubble-covered surfaces are scattered along the Sierran crest, as at Dana Plateau (fig. 78), and include the summit of Mount Whitney 50 mi to the south. The south-facing slope of Mount Hoffmann, our original vantage point in the park, is a somewhat similar upland surface, although slow disintegration and spalling of granite sheets has created an irregular, flaggy surface. This unglaciated surface is abruptly truncated by a glacial cirque cut deeply into the north face of Hoffmann—a striking contrast in erosional processes

unquote

quotes from same site...

and here is a bit important to the Ages of Man...

quote

After the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 years ago), temperatures in many parts of the world rose, reaching a maximum about 5,000 years ago. By that time, probably no glaciers survived in the Sierra Nevada. Temperatures then dropped, first slowly, then more rapidly; and small glaciers began to form in the Sierra once again by about 2,500 years ago.

unquote

I'll have to get the book: The Geologic Story of Yosemite National Park (1987) by N. King Huber

Thing to remember in all this is how slow things happen...

quote

The landscape is slowly but continually being modified. The Sierra Nevada continues to rise—and continues to be eroded. Lakes are being filled with sediment. When erosion outpaces uplift, as it eventually will, the range will be reduced to rolling upland, much as it was tens of millions of years ago. In the meantime, Yosemite remains a delight to the visitor, especially to those who learn to read the story its rocks and landscape have to tell.

Pic is from site...and probably book.

unquote

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Ice Cores

Watching the snow fall today I got to wondering what would happen if it wouldn't stop!...very pretty...

But to continue the Ages of Man...

Ballroom dancing on...earlier a crime movie and the Rabbi telling more about Paul....Rabbi brought up that sometime ministers are thought to have special connection with God...and sometimes the opposite!...so it's kinda tough for them...seems the Rabbi was speaking from personal experience but tied it in to Paul's shipwreck and then being bitten by viper...these stories I'm not familiar with from Sunday school..

Anyway...I thought about the ice coring in Greenland and Iceland...lemgolook...brb...

International Polar Year 2007-8

http://www.ipy.org/

something to study!!

Vostok ice cores might go back ten thousand years...it's an imperfect science!!

I'm really sleepy...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

History's Timeline

I thought about Velikovsky and his Worlds in Collision...

Stallone Banderas in Assassins...oh...Stallone's already caught the girl with the cat....

There's a recent book, by yet another Russian, which fiddles with the timeline of history....Vel. and this one both try to redo the Bible stories....brb...Fomenko..something called The New Chronology...and a wikipedia search will bring it up...

Bandera got blown out a window...

Dendrochronology....tree rings...

quote

Fully anchored chronologies which extend back more than 10,000 years exist for river oak trees from South Germany (from the Main and Rhine rivers).[1] Another fully anchored chronology which extends back 8500 years exists for the bristlecone pine in the Southwest US (White Mountains of California).[2]. Furthermore, the mutual consistency of these two independent dendrochronological sequences has been confirmed by comparing their radiocarbon and dendrochronological ages.[3]

from wiki

unquote

Well, I'm looking at the old Egyptian king lists...which is some kinda "tree ring chronology"...and I've always wondered how it could go so far back....and the areas surrounding not have similar times....I mean the Great Pyramid...brb...2528 BC...and there's like another two thousand years before that!...and the present warm period after the last glaciation (apparently we are in an ice age...one of four major ones over the millenia!) started ten thousand years ago...it's something to ponder!!...there's a slice of redwood at the Museum...I'll have to study that!

And I looked up Ur...thats about 2600 BC...the Egyptian were like up and going strong before everyone...and there's that business of how their art starts out strong...and then the quality drops off...how old the Hiroglyphs!?....brb...well...generally Sumarian, Egyptian and Chinese got up and going three thousand BC or so...

enough for tonight!!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Ages of Man

National Geo was on with ghost stories...flipped to the end of Laura Croft...sledding with the dogs without a sled...I like that part!....next movie...dont know what it is yet but it starts in Santorini!!...cool...oh...another Tomb Raider...good...something to watch!

But the Ages of Man..I've sometimes thought I would have liked to live in the old Greek bronze age...it likley had it's turmoils too...but I got to thinking about the Ages of Man in regard to how they were each set in the enviroment. Clearly ours is a dark age...but just a bit ago...when the Indians lived in North America...they may have been the brightest age...environmentally speaking!

And I thought to work this all out like I did with the different ways the Park is being used...from the High Camps to the Valley...and beyond...places like Tahoe and Mammoth.

How did the civilizations fit in the environment, and how will the ones to come!!??

Thera...brb....well...got to reading about the Titans and their war with the Olympians...

I wish I could made sense of these old Myths...it's like they're telling something beyond just the fantastic story...Croft: the cradle of life....nature is about balance...Pandora's box at the end of the world....oh..it's a treasure hunt and Alexander hid the treasure!

enough for tonight!!...but not after reading some Gould on Velikovsky!...for tomorrow...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door