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

EARLIER DISPLACEMENTS OF CRUST 305
seen, could account for the widespread Pleistocene extinc-
tions.
Speaking of more specific evidences, if the Alaskan Peninsula
were near the North Pole, this would have meant the
deglaciation of the Ross Sea and, indeed, of all that half of
Antarctica. What have the Ross Sea cores (Figure XI) to
say? Core N-4 shows deposition of nonglacial sediment from
110,000 to 130,000 years ago. This by itself provides some
confirmation. Core N-5 shows deposition of nonglacial sediment
from 130,000 to 180,000 years ago, implying that either
the pole was situated in Alaska for a long time or else a still
earlier polar position was so situated as to give Antarctica
temperate conditions. Core N-g shows fine glacial sediment
from about 120,000 to about 200,000 years ago. This, too,
implies a climate warmer than the present, but the evidence
is, obviously, inconclusive. Only a great many more cores
from the same area can clarify these ambiguities.
As I have mentioned, with each step backward into the
past, the evidence decreases geometrically in quantity. The
available indications of a pole in Alaska amount to no more
than suggestions for research, but, in my opinion, they can-
not be disregarded on that account. It might be objected
that if Alaska was at the pole only 100,000 years ago, there
should be plentiful evidence of a continental glaciation in
Alaska. We must not be too easily impressed by this objection.
In the first place, there is a possibility that many of the
evidences have been destroyed since that time by the glaciers
of the Wisconsin period, and by the present glaciers. Then,
there is the obvious possibility that evidences have been over-
looked or misinterpreted, as seems to have occurred in Brit-
ain. Finally, if widespread subsidence of land areas has oc-
curred in the North Atlantic, so may
it have occurred in the
Pacific. Extensive evidence of a North Pacific land bridge
(not to be confused with a Behring Strait connection) has
been summarized by Dodson (115:373). How long Dodson's
land connection may have lasted is not known, but it could
conceivably have lasted until comparatively recent times.