Have you ever noticed the Hawaiian islands and subsurface mountain chain leading up to them, suddenly change direction?

Take a look at Google maps /earth, find Hawaii and zoom out so you can see Hawaii and the Bering Sea.

Do you see the sub surface mountain chain & islands that lead from Alaska to Hawaii?
Notice how it takes a sharp turn and goes east?

Now look closer to the Bering Sea, where the Pacific plate goes under the Aleutian Islands and comes to a point. If you look real close you can see a faint remnants of a mountain chain veering back to the northwest, similar to the direction the islands go now.

This intrigued me so I decided to dig deeper. I measured approximate distance between each “turn” and discovered they’re very close in length. Take a look at what I put together below and tell me what you think.

Northernmost point of chain near Bering Sea – 52 00 00N; 166 00 00E
Point of turn – 33 00 00N; 172 00 00E
Southeastern point of Big Island – 18 30 00N; 155 30 00E

2167 km from Bering Sea to the “turn”
2303 km from the “turn” to the Big Island
[link to www.movable-type.co.uk]

Average distance between “turns” = 2235 km = 223,500,000 cm

Average speed Pacific plate 5 - 10 cm/year
[link to hypertextbook.com]

Interval between “turns”
22.35 Million years @ 10 cm/year
31.93 Million years @ 7 cm/year
44.70 Million years @ 5 cm/year
Average of all figures above = 32,993,333 or 33 Million years

Now ponder this…

34 Million years ago is the start of the Oligocene period…
”The start of the Oligocene is marked by a notable extinction event; the replacement of European fauna with Asian fauna, except for the endemic rodent and marsupial families called the Grande Coupure. The Oligocene-Miocene boundary is not set at an easily identified worldwide event but rather at regional boundaries.”
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

65.5 Million years ago (31.5 million year difference) is the start of Paleocene period…
”The Paleocene Epoch immediately followed the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, which marks the demise of non-avian dinosaurs, the giant marine reptiles and much other fauna and flora. The die-off of the dinosaurs left unfilled ecological niches worldwide.”
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

”The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time, approximately 66 million years ago.”
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

I thought this was intriguing to say the least. I have no idea what caused these “turns.” Could have been pole shifts, asteroid impacts, or super volcanoes…could be a combination…could be none of them…

Last Edited by Sol Neman on 11/21/2012 03:08 AM