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

148
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
the flat tops are submerged anywhere
from a few hundred
feet to three miles below sea level.
When these sea mounts were first discovered, they were
explained in accordance with the theory of the permanence
of ocean basins (210). It was proposed that as the sediments
gathered in enormous thickness on the ocean floor through
hundreds of millions of years, the floor actually gave way,
and sank, taking the sea mounts down below sea level. This
theory was undermined, of course, by the discovery that no
such thick layer of sediments exists on the ocean floors, but
that, on the contrary, the layer of sediments is in some places
extremely thin, or even virtually nonexistent.
Another line of evidence helps to dispose completely of
this explanation of sea mounts. Foraminifera are minute protozoa
that live in the sea. Their species vary with differences
in the depth and temperature of the water in which they live,
and those of past geological periods, found in fossil state,
differ from living species. Studies of fossilized foraminifera
from the tops of the sea mounts have revealed that they are
much younger than the sea mounts have been assumed to
be (197). Comparatively recent species have been gathered
from the tops of sea mounts subsided to great depths. Unless
turbidity currents could suffice to carry such deposits long
distances across the ocean floor and then upwards to the tops
of the sea mounts, another cause for the subsidence of the
sea mounts must be found. When we remember that Umbgrove
referred to frequent upward and downward oscillations
of the floor of the Pacific, resulting from an unknown cause,
we can see that the idea of a gradual and continuous sub-
sidence of the ocean floor under the weight of accumulating
sediments is a singularly weak one, for even if the supposed
layer of sediments existed, the theory still unaccountably
of the sea bottom.
ignores the recurring uplifts
The foregoing considerations reveal the essential weakness
of the conclusion that the seas that periodically invaded the
continents were always shallow seas "epicontinental" seas,
flooding the permanent continents. First there was land;