The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

CONTINENTS AND OCEAN BASINS 145
one case a continent apparently subsided; in the other it first
subsided and then was raised up. Quite obviously the movements
in both directions must have been related to one
fundamental dynamic process. The physical geology of the
Rift, which can be directly examined, shows that the indirect
evidence of the sedimentary rocks of the northeastern states
of the United States, and of Scotland and Spitsbergen (and
the paleontological evidence), must be taken seriously. The
evidence in favor of an important land mass in the present
North Atlantic cannot be dismissed.
5. The Evidence of Oceanography
A great deal of new evidence bearing on the question of the
permanence of continents and ocean basins has resulted from
the oceanographic research of recent years. There has been a
revolution in our ideas of the nature of the ocean floor.
that the ocean floors were continu-
Formerly, it was thought
ous, flat marine plains, buried thousands of feet deep under
an accumulation of sediments extending back in unbroken
series to the earliest geological periods. After all, the theory
of permanence of the ocean basins required this concept. It
has been found, however, that, on the contrary, there are
hills, valleys, mountain systems, and canyons on the sea bottom
very much like those on land. There is no continuous
thick layer of sediments. The features of the ocean bottom
appear to resemble, in singular fashion, those of the land.
One of our leading geologists, Richard Foster Flint, has
written:
Sound-wave surveying . . . has revolutionized our picture of the
ocean floor. Instead of the plainslike surfaces that were once believed
to be nearly universal, broad areas of the floor are now known to have
an intricacy of detail that rivals that of complex land surfaces. In
some places the detail seems to have resulted from local warping and
faulting of the crust and submarine volcanic activity, but in others it
consists of valley systems somewhat like those that diversify the land.