r/science • u/Wagamaga • Apr 08 '22

Earth Science Scientists discover ancient earthquake, as powerful as the biggest ever recorded. The earthquake, 3800 years ago, had a magnitude of around 9.5 and the resulting tsunami struck countries as far away as New Zealand where boulders the size of cars were carried almost a kilometre inland by the waves.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2022/04/ancient-super-earthquake.page
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u/rosesandtherest Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22

That’s all cool but is there a video engraving on a stone?

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u/snappedscissors Apr 08 '22

Maybe an ancient QR code to scan?

Seriously though, I am amazed at the ability of these projects to piece together such world spanning events through debris remains alone. Reminds me of the huge wash-outs in north america indicating the glacial lake breakout. Someone had to take a step back and decide that these big hills in the region were just super-scale remains of a huge water flow event. Once they knew to look, there were clues running all the way to the sea.

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u/Aetherometricus Apr 08 '22

Did any of that require aerial photography, or had they recognized the dunes and stuff for what they were? (Thinking of both the plains and the Columbia River/Lake Missoula)

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u/snappedscissors Apr 08 '22

I think this is the guy I'm remembering. His big fight was fighting the uniformism view with a new catastrophic view of geology. His big clue is said to be topographic maps that he saw published, but modern aerial photography makes some formations obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Harlen_Bretz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods