This one is a bit strange. We are told the Colorado river disappeared for 5 million years. We are not told the full story of that disappearance, only that scientists now think the Colorado river may have overflowed the banks of a large lake and went on to carve out the Grand Canyon. I would have thought that would have involved an awful lot of water to accomplish. More than what the Colorado river could have provided by overflowing from a lake. Where presumably it become stuck. There are elements in this story, as given out to the media, that are simply missing from the press release. What was the origin of the lake. Where did all the water come from in the lake. Was it solely down to the river – or was the Grand Canyon located in another climate zone at the time. There are certain similarities with the earlier post this week on the Scablands, and an enormous flood of water carving out canyons and channels etc. Was there a similar flood of water – or are they barking up the wrong tree. Was, indeed, the Grand Canyon carved out by water – or by some other mechanism?
William sent in a link to an MSN version of the story – but instead, see https://phys.org/news/2026-04-colorado-river-geological-million-years.html … Geologists have traced the Colorado river and the missing 5 million years to an ancient lake spill. Apparently, it did not always flow through the Grand Canyon but previously had an alternative route. Or was simply led into a lake basin that gradually built up until the moment the water overspilled the lake bed and went on to carve itself a route through what is now the Grand Canyon. You can read the research paper at https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adz6826 … published in the journal, Science. The answer to my query above may lie in the research paper itself, rather than in the press release distributed to interested media sites. Have they any evidence the Grand Canyon did not exist prior to 11 million years ago? What would cause water to outflow from the lake? A shift in the axis of rotation might possibly do that but of course that would not appear in a mainstream journal – or any kind of catastrophism. That would mean a very quick sort of emptying of the lake of water. Like a cooking pot upended. I’m sure there are plenty of other catastrophic events that may account for the spill of water – leading to a catastrophic flow carving a gorge like hole in the geology over many miles.
An interesting further point is that this occurred during the Late Miocene period. In other words, a catastrophe brought an end to the Miocene. Not only that but this probably also contains uniformitarian dating of sediments laid down in that catastrophe. In other words, what is being described as millions of years may have been considerably less. Decades perhaps rather than millions. An instantaneous emptying of the lake.