BLACK
SEA PYRITE: As the last ice age melted
away, the Mediterranean Sea rose until it forced
seawater over the Bosporus in a waterfall calculated
to have been 200 times the size of Niagara
Falls. The Black Sea quickly formed as the
rushing waters flooded ancient farmlands around
a large freshwater lake, abruptly causing the
population to flee. Mediterranean microplankton
such as this coccosphere - a single-celled
plantlike organism - eventually populated the
new Black Sea and accumulated in the sediments
below, where chemicals in the seawater reacted
with some of the organisms inside their carbonate
shells to create crystals of mineral pyrite.
The sample of Black Sea sediment from which
this image is derived is from a project by
Lamont geophysicist Walter Pitman and marine
geologist Bill Ryan who investigated this phenomenon.
Pitman and Ryan suggest that this geologic
event was the source of the legends of Gilgamesh
and Noah's Flood. Their theory is presented
in their book "Noah's Flood", published in
2000 by Simon & Schuster. Magnification ~ 16,000
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