ANOTHER FLOOD DUE?

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18193, 14 September 1933, Page 9

ANOTHER FLOOD DUE?

SCIENTIST’S THEORY BEHAVIOR OF OCEANS WASHINGTON, July 26. Tho theory was advanced before the International Geological Congress that the earth is due for another flood —or a whole series of them—if past behavior of the oceans continues in the future. In an address, Dr. A. W. Grabau of Pekin, China, said that since as far back as tho geological age known as the Cambrian, more than 500,000,000 years ago, when life was just getting its start on earth, the level of the sea has periodically risen and fallen in a regular rhythm. He called it the “pulsation theory.” The cause of these periodic floods is not known for sure, but may be linked up with activity of radio-active substances like radium in the interior of the earth, lie added. This radio-activity probably generates beat, be said some scientists holiovo, and there is evidence that the float may escape at intervals by a “blowing off steam” process that may have something to do with causing the ocean floods.

Geologists have long known that the oceans have partially flooded the continents many times in the earth’s past, but many bad held the theory that this was due "to sinking of the continents.

Dr. Grabau, however, said all evidence indicates that rise and fall of sen level every few million years is the real cause of the floods. Some areas of flic continents have risen and fallen, but this was only secondary to the ocean movements, lie added. ■ A series of gradual, periodic rises, followed-by slow periods of receding of tlio waters can be traced in the old rocks of all continents by two methods, he continued.

One is by the layers of overlapping sediments laid down in succession one oil top of the other as the seas gradually advanced further and further inland. The receding waters left, sediments also, hut these were laid down in layers in reverse fashion. Tho other method of tracing them, ho explained, is _by fossils of extinct animals left in the layers of sediments.