Chapter V of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Earth in Upheaval is entitled Tidal Wave. The six sections of this chapter review the scientific evidence for catastrophic floods and mega-tsunamis in the Earth’s recent past. The final section, Agate Spring Quarry, discusses another fossiliferous deposit, the Agate Fossil Beds in Sioux County, Nebraska. Here, in the valley of the Niobrara River, several significant deposits of Miocene fossils were discovered at the end of the 19th century. In 1965, an area of more than 12 km2 surrounding the beds was authorized as a National Monument. The Agate Fossil Beds National Monument was officially established in 1997.
Most of the land in the National Monument was once part of the Agate Springs Ranch, a cattle farm owned by James H Cook and his wife Kate. (Velikovsky writes Spring instead of Springs.) In the 1878, when the ranch still belonged to Kate’s parents, James found some petrified bones on the property. Curious trace fossils known as the Devil’s Corkscrews were also uncovered. In 1892, these were examined by the palaeontologist Erwin H Barbour of the University of Nebraska, who dubbed them Daimonelix (Greek for _demon-screw). They were later identified by Olaf Peterson of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh as the fossilized burrows of an extinct species of diminutive beaver.
In 1904, Peterson became the first palaeontologist to conduct a proper scientific excavation of the Fossil Hills. Geologists and palaeontologists from several other institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History and Yale University, carried out excavations between 1904 and 1923. Specimens of Miocene fossils from the Agate Beds can now be found in natural history museums around the world. The principal depositories of the fossils are to be found in two prominent hills on the site, now known as University Hill and Carnegie Hill. Fossils have also been excavated from Beardog Hill (Carnegie Quarry 3) and Quarry A.
The current theory is that the beds were laid down as sedimentary deposits about 20-16 Ma [million years ago], during the Miocene Epoch. The fossils are confined to a stratum only 0.5 metres thick at the base of an ancient stream channel. Most of the skeletons are disarticulated. The resulting bone bed has been described as a logjam of individual bones (Hunt 29). Some of the best specimens of Miocene mammals have been recovered from the Agate Fossil Beds. Among the mammalian families represented, the following may be noted:
Equidae: Horses. Excavated genera include Miohippus, Merychippus_ and Parahippus, all of which are now extinct.
Rhinocerotidae: Rhinoceroses. One extinct genus, Menoceras, is the commonest animal to be found in the Agate assemblage.
Amphicyonidae: Beardogs, from which Beardog Hill takes its name. They comprise an extinct family of terrestrial carnivores.
Merycoidodontidae: Oreodonts, an extinct family of semi-aquatic hippopotamus-like hogs.
Entelodontidae: Entelodonts, an extinct family of giant pig-like ungulates.
Camelidae: Camels. Two extinct genera, the gazelle-like Stenomylus and the giraffe-like Oxydactylus are well represented.
Castoridae: Beavers. The extinct genus Palaeocastor was responsible for creating the Devil’s Corkscrews. Palaeocastor was much smaller than modern beavers.
Chalicotheriidae: Chalicotheres, an extinct family of herbivores closely related to horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs.
Protoceratidae: Protoceratids, an extinct family of herbivorous deer-like ungulates.
Jakob Heierli
In this short section, Velikovsky cites only four sources. Two of these we have already met in Earth in Upheaval:
Richard Swann Lull: An American palaeontologist, whose Fossils: What They Tell Us of Plants and Animals of the Past was quoted in the preceding section of this chapter.
Richard Foster Flint: Professor of Geology at Yale University, whose Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch was quoted in the first section of Chapter II, The Erratic Boulders.
The third source cited in this section is Jakob Heierli, a Swiss schoolteacher, who became an internationally recognized authority on the archaeology and prehistory of Switzerland.
Jakob Heierli was born in 1853 in Herisau, an Alpine town in the northeast of Switzerland. From 1871 to 1873 he attended the teachers’ training college in Kreuzlingen, which lies about 30 km north of Herisau, on Lake Constance. From 1873 to 1875 Heierli was head of the local training school. From 1875 to 1879 he underwent further training in the field of education at the University of Zurich, and in 1879 he graduated as a secondary-school teacher. From 1882 until his death in 1912 he worked as a secondary-school teacher in Hottingen, which is now a part of Zürich.
From 1880 onwards, Heierli devoted much of his time to researching and popularizing the prehistory of his native Switzerland, alongside his duties as a schoolteacher. He attended lectures at the University of Zürich and the Zürich Polytechnic (now ETH Zürich). He also took part in several geological expeditions and archaeological excavations.
Heierli was a member of the board of directors of the Antiquarian Society of Zürich and vice-president of the Ethnographic Society (later the Geographic-Ethnographic Society) of Zürich. He was a co-founder of the Swiss Society for Prehistory (today Archäologie Schweiz) and the society’s secretary until his death. As a docent of the University of Zürich, Heierli presented lectures in prehistory for more than twenty years. He also lectured at the Zürich Polytechnic. In 1901, the University of Zürich awarded him an honorary doctorate “in recognition of his services to research into the prehistory of Switzerland.” In France he was awarded the title “Officier d’Académie,” an order of knighthood reserved for academics and cultural and educational figures. In 1901, Heierli published Urgeschichte der Schweiz [The Prehistory of Switzerland], the first general overview of the subject.
Jakob Heierli died in Zürich in 1912, a month short of his 59th birthday. He was survived by his wife Julie Heierli-Weber (née Weber), whose field of study was the history of Swiss national costumes.
The only work by Heierli that Velikovsky cites is Das Kesslerloch bei Thayngen, a monograph on a cave near the Swiss village of Thayngen, which was occupied by early humans of the Magdalenian Culture during the Upper Palaeolithic, around 15,000 to 11,000 years ago.
Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch
Velikovsky’s fourth source in this section is Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch, a Swiss botanist. His father, schoolteacher Josef Krzymowski, had fled his native Poland after taking part in the failed January Uprising against Russian rule in 1863-64. Heinrich was born in Winterthur, near Zürich, in 1879. He was the third son of Josef and his second wife Lucie Brockmann, whose maiden name Heinrich adopted in 1902. Three years later, he married the Swiss botanist Marie Jerosch and the couple adopted the name Brockmann-Jerosch.
Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch was one of the pioneers in phytosociology, or plant sociology, the scientific study of plant communities. His mentor in this field was Carl Joseph Schröter, under whom he studied at ETH Zürich.
Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch died in an automobile accident in 1939 at the age of 59.
Velikovsky cites his paper Die Änderungen des Klimas seit der grössten Ausdehnung der letzten Eiszeit in der Schweiz [Climate Change in Switzerland since the Last Glacial Maximum], which was presented at the 11th International Geological Congress in Stockholm in 1910. In this paper, Brockmann-Jerosch cites Heierli’s work on Kesslerloch, so this is not an independent source.
Catastrophism
Velikovsky cites Richard Swann Lull’s Fossils as evidence that the fossils at Agate Beds were deposited in a sudden catastrophic event, and not by gradual, uniformitarian processes over millions of years:
The thickness of the deposit varies from three to twenty inches, the bones toward the bottom being more or less worn and rounded, indicating either longer exposure or farther transportation before they reached their final resting place.
In the larger of the two hills the fossils are in such remarkable profusion in places as to form a veritable pavement of interlacing bones, very few of which are in their natural articulation with one another ...
Some miles farther to the east is another quarry of approximately the same age (Miocene period) , which contains remains of the beautiful gazelle camel, Stenomylus (Fig. 22), some of the skeletons completely articulated, others disarticulated. Here, out of half a hundred individuals collected by parties from Amherst College, Yale University, the American Museum, and Carnegie Museum, all pertain to this one species save a single skull of a huge wolf-like carnivore, probably a fellow victim of a common disaster. In both instances the deposits are river sands and seem to represent large coves in the back waters of which the carcasses found lodgment after drifting down stream from the place of catastrophe, wherever that may have been. (Lull 31-33)
Lull’s caption to Fig. 22 reads:
Collected by the author and mounted in Yale Peabody Museum. These skeletons, along with forty others, were found near Agate Spring, Nebraska. Such a profusion of skeletons belonging to the one genus, and the fact that there was only one other associated skeleton, lends to the belief that these were all victims of a common disaster. (Lull 33)
Note that Lull is Velikovsky’s source for the misspelling of Agate Springs Quarry. Lull is also the source, uncredited, for the information concerning the fossiliferous block in the American Museum of Natural History in New York:
The profusion of individuals from the Agate quarries may be judged from a single block now in the American Museum (Fig. 23). This block measures 5½ x 8 feet [1.7 x 2.4 m], and contains twenty-two skulls and an uncounted number of skeletal bones. As these average 198 bones to an animal, there may be at least 4356 bones in the block of forty-four square feet [4 m2], or ninety-nine to the square foot [~1000 per square metre]. (Lull 34)
Velikovsky also took from Lull’s account the details recorded in the following two paragraphs:
The animals found there were mammals. The most numerous was the small twin-horned rhinoceros (Diceratherium). There was another extinct animal (Moropus) with a head not unlike that of a horse but with heavy legs and claws like those of a carnivorous animal; and bones of a giant swine that stood six feet high (Dinohyus hollandi) were also unearthed.
A few miles to the east, in another quarry, were found skeletons of an animal which, because of its similarity to two extant species, is called a gazelle camel (Stenomylus). A herd of these animals was destroyed in a disaster. As in Agate Spring Quarry, the fossil bones were deposited in sand transported by water. The transportation was in a violent cataract of water, sand, and gravel, that left marks on the bones. (Velikovsky 62)
Velikovsky closes his discussion of the Agate Fossil Beds by drawing an obvious conclusion:
Tens of thousands of animals were carried over an unknown distance, then smashed into a common grave. The catastrophe was most probably ubiquitous, for these animals—the small twin-horned rhinoceros, clawed horse, giant swine, and gazelle camel—did not survive, but became extinct There is nothing in their skeletons to warrant regarding them as degenerate and doomed to extinction. And the very circumstances in which they are found bespeaks a violent death at the hands of the elements, not slow extinction in a process of evolution. (Velikovsky 62-63)
Needless to remark, modern palaeontologists are keen to localize this catastrophe and downgrade its scale:
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska is a glimpse into life on the High Plains 20 million years ago. Paleontologists believe that a drought may have brought numerous herd animals together near dwindling water sources, where they perished near each other, leaving behind a rich trove of fossils. (National Parks Conservation Association)
Other Places in the World
Agate Spring Quarry is the final section in this chapter of Earth in Upheaval. In the closing paragraphs, Velikovsky adds an appendix in which he takes a brief look at similar fossiliferous deposits from around the globe. He first mentions several bone quarries in the United States:
In the United States, Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, twenty miles south of Cincinnati, contained the bones of one hundred mastodons, besides many other extinct animals. President Jefferson gathered there his famous collection of fossils. In San Pedro Valley, California, skeletons of the mastodon are found standing upright, in the posture in which they died, mired in gravel, ash, and sand. Fossils found in John Day Basin, Oregon, and the glacial Lake Florissant, Colorado, are embedded in volcanic ash. In the Southern states fossil bones are quarried for the commercial exploitation of phosphates. (Velikovsky 63)
No source is cited for any of these. They are not mentioned in Lull’s Fossils. So what was Velikovsky’s source for these bone quarries? After much online searching, I finally tracked it down: Historical Geology by Carl Owen Dunbar, which Velikovsky first cited in Chapter IV, in the section Ice Age in the Tropics:
One of the most striking of all the bog deposits is that of Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, about 20 miles southwest of Cincinnati, from which more than 100 mastodons have been recovered, along with skeletons of the bison, reindeer, moose, and wild horse. This locality was known to Thomas Jefferson, who, during his presidency, reserved one room in the White House as a museum for his fossils from Big Bone Lick.
The “quicksand” in the channels of aggrading streams has also claimed many victims, which appear in the fossil deposits of ancient channel sands. In 1942 a locality was discovered in the Pleistocene beds of San Pedro Valley, California, where mastodons had mired in the marsh about a salt lake; their limb bones still remain upright in the deposit.
Falls of volcanic ash (Fig. 25) commonly kill and bury, as the tragic fate of Pompeii reminds us. Many fine fossil deposits in the Cenozoic rocks of western United States are in volcanic ash, like those of the John Day Basin in Oregon and Lake Florissant in Colorado. (Dunbar 43-44)
Dunbar correctly locates Big Bone Lick to the southwest of Cincinnati, whereas Velikovsky places it south. As we shall see below, however, Velikovsky repeats Dunbar’s mistake of locating San Pedro Valley in California. It is also curious that Velikovsky replaces Dunbar’s mired in the marsh with mired in gravel, ash, and sand. Velikovsky also erroneously emends Dunbar’s Lake Florissant to the glacial Lake Florissant. The final detail in Velikovsky’s passage—concerning the commercial exploitation of phosphates—is not in Dunbar. I have still not succeeded in tracking down its source.
Big Bone Lick
Big Bone Lick State Park, in the extreme north of Kentucky, is “the birthplace of American palaeontology.” In 1807, President Jefferson dispatched William Clark—lately returned from leading the historic Lewis and Clark Expedition across the continent to the Pacific—to collect mastodon bones from the vicinity of Big Bone Creek. Even earlier, in 1739, French soldiers acquired a number of bones from the Lick, which they sent back to Paris. Decades later, these were examined by George Cuvier and were instrumental in informing his catastrophist theory of evolution and extinction.
The park contains a large assemblage of megafauna fossils from the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (c 10,000 BCE): mammoth, mastodon, bison, caribou, deer, elk, horse, moose, musk ox, peccary, ground sloths, wolves, black bears, stag moose, saber-toothed cats, and tapirs. In addition to these animals, the area is also believed to have been home to humans of the Clovis culture.
Palaeontologists assume that these animals were attracted to this locality by the salt lick after which it is named. Many of them, the story goes, subsequently became trapped in the mud and their carcasses were preserved by the locality’s ideal conditions for fossilization. Velikovsky does not explicitly dispute this or insist on a catastrophist origin for Big Bone Lick. He merely mentions this bone quarry in passing:
Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, twenty miles south of Cincinnati [actually 31 km SW of Downtown Cincinnati], contained the bones of one hundred mastodons, besides many other extinct animals. President Jefferson gathered there his famous collection of fossils. (Velikovsky 63)
It has been left to his disciples to make the case for a catastrophist origin. The case, however, was actually made as early as 1831 by the American conchologist William Cooper :
It is natural, at the first view, to suppose that the herds of elephants and mastodons were attracted hither by the salt, which they probably found as agreeable a condiment as the modern herbivorous animals; and that, like many of these, they died at the spot where their remains have been discovered. Such is the opinion of the present inhabitants, as well as of most persons who visit the place ...
... At the same time, however, I can readily admit, that they inhabited the neighbouring country, and that a few, perhaps, were at the spot, or dispersed through the surrounding woods and marshes, when the catastrophe occurred, which seems to have extinguished their race.
Some of the appearances which the bones exhibit, have been alluded to in the course of our previous descriptions; very few, indeed, if any, even of the smallest, were found without some mark of their having been subjected to violent action ... the frames of those found at Big-bone Lick, seem rather to have been torn asunder, and intermixed in the most promiscuous disorder, before they were permitted to find here a place of rest. It is rare to meet with a single bone of the large animals, or of those smaller ones, that accompany them, that is not more or less bruised or broken ...
... the mere circumstance of finding so large a number of detached teeth as has been often found, lying together within a small compass, is alone sufficient to prove that the owners did not perish where these lie ...
... But, at the same time, that we find so much reason to suppose that the great bones, as well as those of the other extinct species have been brought hither, since the death of the animals, and probably by the agency of water, it does not seem probable that they have been transported from, a very great distance. Most of the appearances they afford, seem to indicate sudden and violent, but not long continued action ...
... They appear to have perished by the agency of water, which, after transporting their remains a moderate distance, deposited them in a mass where they have since been found. (Cooper 213-217)
In 2007, the Young Earth Creationist organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) opened its Creation Museum at Petersburg, Kentucky, just 22 km north of Big Bone Lick. And 32 km SSE of the Lick, at Williamstown, is AiG’s Ark Encounter, a Creationist theme park, whose main attraction is a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark. According to AiG, the Biblical Flood was the catastrophe that killed the animals whose remains are now entombed at Big Bone Lick.
The local Shawnee people preserve legends of giant bison:
Shawnee legend tells of a herd of huge bison rampaging through the Ohio Valley, laying waste to all in their path. To protect the tribe, a deity slew these great beasts with lightning bolts, finally chasing the last giant buffalo into exile across the Wabash River, never to trouble the Shawnee again. (Big Bone Lick: The Cradle Of American Paleontology)
The giant bison, Bison latifrons, is believed to have become extinct no later than 20,000 years ago, but a slightly smaller species, Bison antiquus survived until 10,000 years ago and is represented in the Big Bone Lick assemblage. Have the Shawnee memories of megafauna been preserved for ten thousand years or more? Does not the preservation of such memories lend support to the hypothesis that the catastrophe which brought about the extinction of so many large creatures occurred much more recently than is currently claimed? On the other hand, did the Shawnee even inhabit this region in the pre-Christian era? If their ancestors only arrived here in the last two thousand years, their legends of megafauna rampaging across this landscape may be no more than aetiological myths, concocted to explain the presence of the big bones at the Lick.
San Pedro Valley
Velikovsky’s second example of a deposit of mastodon bones in the United States is the San Pedro Valley, which Velikovsky places in California:
In San Pedro Valley, California, skeletons of the mastodon are found standing upright, in the posture in which they died, mired in gravel, ash, and sand. (Velikovsky 63)
There are several places in the United States called San Pedro, including one in California, but the San Pedro Valley in which mastodon skeletons were discovered standing upright, in the posture in which they died is not in California but in the southeastern corner of Arizona:
In 1942, mastodon skeletons, still standing upright, were found in a marsh near a salt lake in the San Pedro Valley. (Murray 94)
As we have seen, Velikovsky copied this error from his source, Carl Dunbar. Curiously, Dunbar’s endnote, in which he cites his source, corrects this error:
2The Late Cenozoic Vertebrate Faunas from the San Pedro Valley, Arizona; by Charles L. Gazin. Proceedings of the United States National Museum, Vol. 92, 1942. (Dunbar 56)
The San Pedro Valley was first identified by palaeontologists as an important source of fossilized megafauna in 1920, when geologist Kirk Bryan discovered several fossiliferous deposits in the area. More than 170 genera and species of vertebrates from the Late Pleistocene and Greenlandian Ages (c 11,000 BP) have been identified among the San Pedro Valley assemblage. These include mammoths, mastodons, bison, camels, dire wolves, ground sloths, horses, lions, shrub oxen, and tapirs.
As usual, mainstream palaeontologists are baffled by the extinction of so many species and have come up with several scenarios to explain the situation, all of them uniformitarian. But the fact that many skeletons were discovered upright, the animals still standing in the posture in which they died, is proof that these creatures were overtaken by a catastrophe so sudden that death was instantaneous. One is reminded of the carcasses of Siberian mammoths, which were “flash-frozen” with the food they were eating at the time of death still preserved in their mouths.
John Day Basin
The third example cited by Velikovsky of a bone quarry in the United States is John Day Basin in Oregon, where fossils were preserved by volcanic ash. The John Day Fossil Beds were established as a National Monument in 1975. They are located in the basin of the John Day River, a tributary of the Columbia River which rises in the Blue Mountains and passes through the city of John Day on its way to the similarly named fossil beds.
The plant and animal fossils preserved here are dated to the Eocene and Miocene Epochs, 44-7 Ma. The scientific importance of the site was first noted in 1864 by Thomas Condon, an Irish missionary and amateur geologist. Condon’s tireless efforts to bring the beds to the knowledge of the scientific community and to promote interest in the region led to his being appointed in 1872 Oregon’s first State Geologist. Four years later, he stepped down in order to take up the chair of Geology and Natural History at the university of Oregon.
Several assemblages of fossils were preserved at John Day by a succession of volcanic eruptions:
| Assemblage | Date (Ma) |
|---|---|
| Clarno Nut Beds | 44 |
| Hancock Mammal Quarry | 40 |
| Bridge Creek Flora | 33 |
| Turtle Cove Assemblage | 29 |
| Kimberly Assemblage | 24 |
| Haystack Valley Assemblage | 20 |
| Mascall Assemblage | 15 |
| Rattlesnake Assemblage | 7 |
The last major eruption is thought to have occurred about 7 million years ago, resulting in the Rattlesnake Formation. This contains fossils of mastodons, camels, rhinoceroses, canines, lions, bears, horses, and other animals that grazed on the grasslands of the time. Needless to remark, this was long before the first humans arrived in this part of the world.
It is questionable whether the events in the John Day Basin strengthen the case Velikovsky is making in Earth in Upheaval. The animals fossilized in these deposits undoubtedly came to a catastrophic end, but these catastrophes were probably of local extent and spread out over an unimaginably long interval of time, millions of years before the appearance of modern humans.
Lake Florissant
The fourth and final bone quarry cited by Velikovsky in this section is Lake Florissant, Colorado, which Velikovsky refers to as a glacial lake. His source, Carl Dunbar, does not describe this lake as glacial, and nor do modern geologists:
The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Teller County, is an ancient lake deposit that preserves the terrestrial biota that lived in the Florissant valley area of Colorado 34 million years ago. Because of the diversity of its flora and fauna, Florissant ranks as one of the world’s best known and richest paleontological resources. Together, the fossil biota and geology provide an incredibly detailed snapshot of the western interior of the United States at the Eocene-Oligocene transition—a period in Earth history when there was a dramatic change from warm subtropical, temperate climate to cooler more temperate conditions. The fossil flora also tells us that during the late Eocene, Florissant was at a similar elevation as today—8500 ft. (2590 m), and from the geology, we know that Lake Florissant formed in an area with an active volcanic eruptive center, the Guffey volcano, which spewed ash and violent pyroclastic flows that buried and killed plants and animals alike, but in the end aided in their preservation. (Erwin & Looy)
I can only conclude that Velikovsky made an unwarranted assumption when he identified Florissant Lake as a glacial lake.
The Florissant Fossil Beds are similar to those in John Day Basin: the remains have been preserved in volcanic ash, deposited by a succession of eruptions millions of years ago. There is, however, one unexplained feature: although many species of vertebrates have been identified in the Florissant assemblages, all are exclusively fish, birds and mammals. No reptiles or amphibians have been discovered.
More recently, the remains of a mammoth were discovered in the area:
The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is one of the most important plant and insect fossil sites in the world. The late Eocene age, 34 million-year-old fossils range from plant and insect impressions in paper-thin lake shale to massive petrified tree stumps. A more recent time period is represented at the fossil beds in gravels that accumulated during the last Ice Age at several sites at the fossil beds. At one of these locations gravels buried the remains of a mammoth, the first and only mammoth scientifically documented in Teller County, Colorado. (Colorado Earth Science)
But this discovery was only made in 1994, almost forty years after the publication of Earth in Upheaval and fifteen years after the death of Velikovsky.
Southern States
As we have seen, Velikovsky’s last point concerning the quarrying of fossil bones in the Southern States of the USA for the commercial exploitation of phosphates is of unknown provenance. It is unsourced by Velikovsky and was not taken from Dunbar’s Historical Geology. It is possible that Velikovsky came across it in an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In Chapter VII, in the section entitled The Sahara, Velikovsky cites the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This edition is still copyrighted, so I have not been able to access it. It was first published between 1929 and 1933. The revised 14th edition was published from 1933 to 1973. However, in the Eleventh Edition the following can be read in the article Phosphates:
Important deposits of mineral phosphates are now worked on a large scale in the United States, the annual yield far surpassing that of any other part of the world ... In South Carolina, where there are important deposits of phosphate, formerly more productive than at present, the “land rock” is worked near Charleston, and the “river rock” in the Coosaw river and other streams near Beaufort. The phosphate beds contain Eocene fossils derived from the underlying strata and many fragments of Pleistocene vertebrata such as mastodon, elephant, stag, horse, pig, &c. The phosphate occurs as lumps varying greatly in size, scattered through a sand or clay; they often contain phosphatized Eocene fossils (Mollusca, &c.). Sometimes the phosphate is found at the surface, but generally it is covered by alluvial sands and clays. Phosphate mining began in South Carolina in 1868, and for twenty years that state was the principal producer. Then the Florida deposits began to be worked. In 1892 the phosphates of Tennessee, derived from Ordovician limestones, came into the market. From North Carolina, Alabama and Pennsylvania, also, phosphates have been obtained but only in comparatively small quantities. In 1900 mining for phosphates was commenced in Arkansas. In 1908 Florida produced 1,673,651 tons of phosphate valued at 11 million dollars. All the other states together produce less phosphate than Florida, and among them Tennessee takes the first place with an output of 403,180 tons. (Chisholm 476)
Kesslerloch
Velikovsky was particularly interested in the late glacial and post-glacial remains of animals and plants discovered in the Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland because it comprised a curious collection of species from a variety of different habitats. This suggests that they were the victims of a catastrophe of widespread extent, if not indeed global, which transported the remains from distant climes and deposited them in the cave near Thayngen.
One of Velikovsky’s sources for this passage, Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch’s paper Climate Change since the Last Glacial Maximum, introduced a new term to his vocabulary: Tiergemisch, which translates literally as animal mixture:
Such a mixture of species, which today belong to very different elevations—ie require different degrees of heat—is repeated, as already mentioned, at almost all richer sites in the final stages of the last Ice Age, as is characteristic of the entire diluvium. The Kesslerloch near Thayngen is the most interesting from the point of view of its fauna, and also the best studied ... Here are found from the time when the Rhine glacier began to retreat behind the inner moraines and from the period immediately following this retreat:
Large diluvial mammals of Tertiary type: Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus
Species that are today Arctic and Alpine: Leucocyon lagopus, Gulo luscus, Lepus variabilis, Dricrostomys torquatus, Arctomys marmota, Rangifer tarandus, Capra Ibex, Rupicapra Tragus, Ovibos moschatus, Lagopus
Animals said to exhibit a steppe character: Spermophilus guttatus, Sp. rufescens, Cricetus vulgaris, Equus caballus, and Equus hemionis
Animals found today in forests: Lynchus Lynx, Vulpes Alopex, Mustella martes, Ursus arctos, Talpa europaea, Myoacus Glis, Sus scrofa, Cervus Elaphus and Capreolus Caprea
Plants were also found together with this mixture of animals [Tiergemisch]: Corylus Avellana and spruce (Picea excelsa). (Brockmann-Jerosch 59)
As we have seen, Brockmann-Jerosch cites Heierli’s paper Das Kesslerloch bei Thayngen as his source for this information. Velikovsky includes the Heierli citation alongside the reference to Brockmann-Jerosch’s paper, but there is nothing in Velikovsky’s brief account to indicate that he actually consulted Heierli’s paper:
In Switzerland a conglomerate of bones of animals that belong to different climates and habitats was found in Kesslerloch near Thayngen: Alpine types are there in one “Tiergemisch” with animals of the steppe and of the forest fauna. (Velikovsky 63)
The term Tiergemisch does not appear in Heierli’s text.
Neukölln
Velikovsky’s final example in this chapter of a Tiergemisch comes from Neukölln, a suburb of Berlin in Germany. Velikovsky misspells the name Neuköln. This time, however, the fault cannot be laid at the foot of his source. In Glacial Geology, Richard Foster Flint spells this toponym correctly:
The time that elapsed between the Warthe and Brandenburg glacial maxima is indicated in part by the difference in degree of erosion exhibited by these two drift sheets and in part by fossil-bearing stratified deposits. These deposits are known from many exposures and well records in northern Germany (chiefly in the vicinity of Berlin) and in western Poland. In most places they lie between two tills that are confidently referred to the Brandenburg and the Warthe substages respectively. An outstanding representative section is the Rixdorf sequence, exposed in a gravel pit at Neukölln (formerly Rixdorf), a suburb of Berlin. The name Rixdorf is applied to the whole group of deposits of this date in the Berlin region. The rich mammalian fauna collected (not all at one locality) from this horizon includes groups suggesting some what different climatic conditions. Mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, musk-ox, reindeer, and Arctic fox suggest a boreal climate; two other elephants, Rhinoceros merckii, lion, hyena, beaver, deer, bison, ox, moose, and horse suggest varying degrees of warmer climate. The assemblage has been interpreted as two faunas, one warm and a later colder fauna immediately preceding the approach of the Brandenburg ice. The bones of certain elephants and other animals are present but seem to have been reworked from much older deposits. In fact it seems probable that the relations are more complicated than has been realized and that further study will be necessary before a satisfactory climatic interpretation can be arrived at. (Flint 329-330)
As with the bone cave in Switzerland, the gravel pit at Neukölln—now the Körnerpark, a public park—was characterized by its mixture of species of disparate habitats—once again implying a catastrophe that affected a very large area:
In Germany a gravel pit at Neuköln (formerly Rixdorf), a suburb of Berlin, disclosed two faunas: mammoth, musk ox, reindeer, and arctic fox “suggest a boreal climate”; lion, hyena, bison, ox, and two species of elephant “suggest varying degrees of warmer climate.” The faunas were interpreted as belonging to two periods—glacial and interglacial—but the bones were found all together. “It seems probable that the relations are more complicated than has been realized.” There has not yet been found “a satisfactory climatic interpretation.” (Velikovsky 63)
In a final short but eloquent paragraph, Velikovsky sums up not only this section but the whole of Chapter V:
Great multitudes of animals that filled prairies and forests, water and air, forms fragile or sturdy, with an urge to live and multiply, were more than once suddenly called upon to write their names in the register of extinction. (Velikovsky 63)
And that’s a good place to stop.
References
- Andrew William Amann, Junior, et al, Ice Age Mammals of the San Pedro River Valley, Southeastern Arizona, Arizona Geological Survey, Tucson, AZ (1998)
- Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch, Die Änderungen des Klimas seit der grössten Ausdehnung der letzten Eiszeit in der Schweiz, Die Veränderungen des Klimas seit dem Maximum der lotaten Eiszeit, Pages 55-72, XIth International Geological Congress, Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt, Stockholm (1910)
- Hugh Chisholm (editor), Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume 21, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1911)
- William Cooper, Notices of Big-Bone Lick, The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science, Volume 1, Number 1, Pages 158-174, 205-217, H H Porter, Philadelphia (1831)
- Carl Owen Dunbar, Historical Geology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York (1949)
- Richard Foster Flint, Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York (1947)
- Stanley Hedeen, Big Bone Lick: The Cradle Of American Paleontology, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (2008)
- Jakob Heierli, Das Kesslerloch bei Thaingen, Neue Denkschriften der Schweizerischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Volume 43, Druck von Zürcher & Furrer, Zürich (1907)
- Robert Hunt, Extinct Carnivores Entombed in 20 Million Year Old Dens, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska, The George Wright Forum, Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 29-39, The George Wright Society, Hancock, MI (1984)
- Richard Swann Lull, Fossils: What They Tell Us of Plants and Animals of the Past, The University Society, New York (1931)
- Marian Murray, Hunting for Fossils: A Guide to Finding & Collecting Fossils in All Fifty States, Macmillan, New York (1967)
- Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, New York (1955, 1977)
Image Credits
- Entrance to the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument: © William Bechmann, Fair Use
- Devil’s Corkscrews (Daimonelix Burrows): Frederick Courtland Kenyon, Morrill Geological Expedition, University of Nebraska (1893), Public Domain
- University Hill and Carnegie Hill: © Nebular110, Creative Commons License
- Jakob Heierli: Verhandlungen der Schweizerischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Volume 95, Part 1, Page 152, H R Sauerländer & Co, Aarau (1912), Public Domain
- Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch: UHZ Archives, AB.1.0122, University of Zürich, Public Domain
- James H Cook: NPS Photo / Cook Collection archives
- A Group of Gazelle-Camels (Lull Figure 22): Richard Swann Lull, Fossils: What They Tell Us of Plants and Animals of the Past, Figure 22, The University Society, New York (1931), Public Domain
- Agate Springs Bonebed: © James St Johns, Creative Commons License
- Big Bone Lick, Kentucky: © Mike Hils (photographer), Fair Use
- Big Bone Lick Creek: © Mike Hils (photographer), Fair Use
- Ark Encounter, Williamstown: © Kaleeb18 (photographer), Creative Commons License
- San Pedro Valley, Arizona: © The Old Peublo, Creative Commons License
- Skeleton of Stegomastodon mirificus from San Pedro Valley: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, WolfmanSF (photographer), Public Domain
- Sheep Rock (John Day Fossil Beds): © Finetooth, Creative Commons License
- Petrified Tree Stump (Florissant Fossil Beds): © Joy Carlough (photographer), Fair Use
- Central Florida Phosphate Mining District (Bone Valley): Valentine & Sons Co Ltd, Dundee, Scotland (1909), Public Domain
- Kesslerloch (Thayngen, Switzerland): © Hauserphoton, Creative Commons License
- Model of a Woolly Mammoth (Elephas primigenius): Royal Victoria Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, © Thomas Quine (photographer), Creative Commons License
- Körnerpark, Neukölln: © Assenmacher (photographer), Creative Commons License
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