Sunday 4 June 2023

The Past In The Time Patrol Series: Miocene-Pliocene Transition

Poul Anderson, "Gibraltar Falls" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 113-128.

Animal species in the Iberian peninsula:

hovering hawks and vultures
zebra-striped ponies
primitive rhinoceros
ancestors of giraffe, resembling okapi
red-haired, large-tusked mastodon
peculiar elephants
sabretooths (also in the Oligocene)
early big cats
hyenas
ground apes, sometimes walking upright
six-foot high ant heaps
whistling marmots

The Atlantic has broken through the Gates of Hercules and will take a hundred-plus years to fill the Mediterranean basin which is ten thousand feet below sea level and has been a desert for a million and a half years. The inflow of 10,000 cubic miles per year makes the transition from Miocene to Pliocene.

3 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

God, I'd like to visit there and see that!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, to Both!

I agree it would be a wonder and a marvel to behold Gibraltar Falls!

Plus, think of what a catastrophe it would be if an earthquake again barred the Mediterranean from the Atlantic! It would cause massive disruptions in global commerce and trade, with all the consequences of how that would affect politics. Mostly in bad ways!

Could access to the Atlantic be regained by digging a canal thru the new land bridge connecting Spain with Africa? Perhaps by using nuclear bombs?

Ad astra! Sean

Jim Baerg said...

See these for a treatment of a similar idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(xkcd)
http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/