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Re: perhaps a better explanation of the Mastodon death trap in
Colorado shown on NOVA
Posted:
Feb 4, 2012 3:31 AM
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On Feb 4, 1:10 am, Archimedes Plutonium
<plutonium.archime...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it was yesterday, thursday that I viewed this program on PBS
> while eating dinner. It is called "Ice Age Death Trap"
>
> And I thought I was going to be not entertained by a logical puzzle,
> but rather
> a drab program on fossil finds. But let me tell you, the show became
> far more
> fascinating than anything like a Sherlock Holmes or other mysteries.
>
> What is fascinating is that the scientists in the dig speculated that
> the death trap was caused by the sands near the lake and that an
> earthquake struck and the poor mastodon family drinking in the lake
> were then stuck because the earthquake made the sand into quicksand
> and stuck and starved to death.
>
> And then to add to the mystery another mastodon was found with
> boulders surrounding it. And the speculation here was that an early
> Homo clan cached the mastodon body in the lake for preservation of
> food.
>
> Well let me shot some holes into the above two speculations.
>
> I lived out West for a number of years and was very familar with flash
> floods, especially when it took out the bridge.
>
> Now I do not know the dimensions of the lake in Colorado during the
> time of the Mastodons but a lake has to be fed by some stream or minor
> river, and how high of the surroundings such as mountains were to the
> lake. But if you ever saw a flash flood from a rainstorm, it would
> take entire families of mastodon and transport them to their death.
>
> Now as for the one mastodon bone with notches in the bones, that rocks
> in a flood moving over the body would gouge out the bones.
>
> Let us examine some probabilities:
>
> (a) is it probable that the lake had that consistency of sand, when no
> modern day lake has that consistency to where an earthquake would
> cause a sand trap
> (b) is it likely that humans were in North America 40,000 years
> earlier than what is now known? That we have only some notches on a
> bone and a few boulders near the bones?
> (c) is it likely that humans of that time and place even had a idea of
> caching? Do we see human intelligence in the Old World cacheing food
> in lakes? I do not think so, and since we do not, then to make the
> speculation of caching in the Americas and none in the Old World of
> that same time period is stretching belief.
>
> (d) no signs of predators for entire families of stuck in the sand
> mastodons
> is odd, and would not favor that scenario, but would favor a flash
> flood scenario where the entire pack is sent to death in a flash
> flood.
>
> So my vote goes to Flash Flood.
>
> Now I would need to see the geology of that lake region whether there
> were streams feeding the lake and whether there were mountain high
> points around.
>
> Also, another thing that can be done is to investigate a flash flood
> killing of some other herd animals in the past, perhaps Africa, or the
> western USA. See how many animals were involved, whether any had a
> pile of boulders around their bones. Whether any had notches in their
> bones from rocks scraping.
>
> Probabilities just do not favor a scenario of Earthquake, sand
> texture.
>
I used to live in Teton National Park near Jackson Lake and in the
winter near
the dam, I could see dead moose who had fallen through the ice and had
drowned.
In science theory, we must seek the most simple explanations first,
before we
opine exotic explanations such as a earthquake quicksand trap.
I missed the first 1/4 of this NOVA show about Mastodon trap in
Colorado,
but if the lake were large and then we can see a scenario of where a
herd or
troop of Mastodon went walking out on the ice and fell in and drowned.
It would
explain why none were victims of predators. And for the explanation of
the "cached
Mastodon", perhaps it had fallen through the ice and that a predator
made it out on the
ice and eaten about 1/2 of the animal and left some teeth marks in the
bones with the notches.
I am not in full possession of the facts about that Lake, but what I
am emphasizing is that
when doing science we have to start out with the first hypothesis as
simple as possible
and only lastly do we want to accept something exotic such as
earthquake-quicksand
and 40,000 year earlier Homo presence in North America cacheing food
in a lake.
And where those boulders around that Mastodon were deposited before
its death via flash flood or something else.
In logic we use Occam's Razor always, start with the most simple and
only end up with exotica
if the simple does not work.
Archimedes Plutonium
http://www.iw.net/~a_plutonium/
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
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