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

THE GREAT EXTINCTIONS 263
greater or lesser distances by the moving ice? This is an important
question. Glaciers often carry vast quantities of debris,
even huge boulders, hundreds of miles, even in some
cases uphill (63:14-15). Hartnagel and Bishop give an ex-
cellent description of the way in which a great ice sheet
moves, and provide a partial answer to the question, in the
following passage:
The remains of most of the Canadian animals that were overwhelmed
in and by the glacial snows were incorporated in the lower,
or ground-contact ice of the southward moving sector of the Quebec
(Labradorian) ice cap. The deepest portion of the ice cap was pushed
into the deep Ontarian valley and becoming stagnant because of its
position and also because of its load of detritus, it served during all
the duration of the Quebec glacier as a bridge over which the upper
ice, by a shearing flow, passed on south over New York. This element
of glacier mechanics is fundamental to the present explanation of the
remains and is believed to de-
peculiar distribution of the Elephas
scribe the behavior of the continental glacier toward deep and
capacious valleys, not only
longitudinal valleys. . . . (203:69).
those transverse to the ice flow but also
This statement should be supplemented by Coleman's remark
that a great continental icecap, independently of any
valleys, moves only in its upper layers, except at the edges.
The layers near the ground are stagnant. This is the reason,
he says, that the evidences of glaciation are found mostly on
the exterior fringes of the area once occupied by the ice
sheet. The central areas escape the grinding and plowing
up that leave such evidences in the latter areas.
The usual explanation of this remarkable fact leaves something
to be desired. According to the accepted concept, an
ice sheet forms first in a small area, and then spreads out,
presumably after it has become thick enough to move outward
by the force of gravity. That means, it seems to me,
that all but a small central area should show signs of having
been passed over by the glacier. Yet, according to Coleman,
the opposite is the case.
I think our assumption provides a good answer to this
problem, for the initial snows, such as we assume may have