Seems like the Toba super volcano eruption 74,000 years ago is looking weaker. Not only is there evidence it had little to effect people in India we now have evidence of the same in eastern Africa. No sign of an environmental crisis it would seem. Go to http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2018/article/no-volcanic-win… … but I suppose one might argue over the dating methodology that was used. Do they have evidence of a downturn at some other period? According to the hypothesis the Toba eruption had a massive affect on the environment around the world as a result of so much material shot up into the atmosphere and creating a nuclear winter kind of event. It was accepted by mainstream some time ago and was embedded in mainstream thinking. Apparently, as far as East Africa is concerned, there is little evidence of an environmental downturn as far as vegetation is concerned, both before and after the hypothesized date of the eruption. Seems like Toba may not have been a super volcano after all – unless somebody has their sums wrong. Researchers concentrated on sediment cores in Lake Malawi, the southernmost of the lakes in the Rift Valley. Previous research had found material from Toba, it was believed, but the new Malawi cores do not. Why is this?
Over at www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-day-the-earth-stood-still/ … we have another strange catastrophe – this time 2.3 billion years ago. Okay, it wasn't yesterday but it seems the plates stopped moving (if one accepts Plate Tectonics in the first place, that early in earth history). Not only did the plates stop moving they also stopped sliding beneath each other. It is described as a hiatus in the geological record – and the research is published in Nature Geoscience (Jan 19th 2018). It was a missing chapter is earth history we are assured. Jostling movements at plate boundaries leave a trace – the creation of new rock (or that is the way the theory develops). The hiatus is thus an absence of evidence of new rock formation – over a period of around 100 million years (no mean span of time). Of course, we are led to believe it has nothing to do with dating methodology (once again) and all to do with a genuine hiatus in Plate Tectonic activity. Of course an explanation has been found – otherwise they would not have told us there was a problem in the first place. The answer is simplicity itself – or the first thought that came into their heads. The plates must have stopped producing new rock because all the plates had come together in an early manifestation of Pangea (a single large continental mass). Surely that would still involve new sea bed formation – but I must be wrong as they think new rock is solely as a result of plate movement.
The idea the plates were locked together of course fits an already preconceived scenario as Pangea is thought to have formed on several occasions and broken up on several occasions as well – but the best bit comes next. They claim that all the plates came together as a super continent which means the earth lost the mechanism by which it expelled excess heat and energy. Really! They add, rather strangely, this mean a 100 million years of tectonic heat and energy built up and until it exploded and burst the super continent into pieces once again. The consequent flare-up produced lots of new crust – which does sound like a catastrophic event of some kind. What might have caused it has obviously not been resolved but the fact geologists had been expecting new rock to fill the 100 million year gap but which it has failed to be discovered over many years is now out there for amateur sleuths as well as the professionals holding their cards close to their chests. One may ask – does the 100 million years really exist in reality, and if so does it mean the Plate Tectonics theory is not as strong as projected by mainstream. Is it really peculiar to have a long period of time separating catastrophic events?