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

EARLIER DISPLACEMENTS OF CRUST Jll
short periods of time. Another writer, Otto Stutzer, after
very careful calculation, concluded that a Pittsburgh coal
bed seven feet thick could have been formed in no more
than 2,100 years (407).
In view of all this evidence, we must not be too much im-
pressed by the very thick layers of rock that are occasionally
found. Croll, who was a sound geologist, even if his theory
about ice ages was not accepted, pointed out that
. . . The thickness of a deposit will depend upon a great many
circumstances, such as whether the deposition took place near to land
or far away in the deep recesses of the ocean, whether it occurred at
the mouth of a great river or along the sea-shore, or at a time when
the sea-bottom was rising, subsiding or remaining stationary. Stratified
formations 10,000 feet in thickness, for example, may under some
conditions, have been formed in as many years,
conditions it may have required as many centuries (91:338).
while under other
It is worth noting that at a number of points the evidence
for great and frequent changes in the earth's climatic condi-
tions is linked with evidence of structural changes in the
earth's crust, that is, with changes in the elevation of lands,
and in the distribution of land and sea. Croll remarked:
... It is worthy of notice that the stratified beds between the coal
seams are of marine and not of lacustrine origin. ... If, for example,
there are six coal seams, one above another, this proves that the land
must have been at least six times below and six times above sea-level
(91:424).
Coleman has emphasized the frequent association of
abrupt breaks in the continuity
of the strata with extreme
changes of elevation above or below sea level. In discussing
the Permo-Carboniferous period in India, he says:
There are the usual cold climate fern leaves in these beds, and
above them, without an apparent break, come the Productus lime-
stones with marine fossils (87:102).
Now, it seems altogether reasonable to suppose that if
changes of climate were associated with changes of elevation
in these different kinds of cases, then the two may have oc-