🚀 go-pugleaf

Dar_83001@yahoo.com (Daryl Habel) wrote in message news:<d24f0b9f.0404102150.6c3469dc@posting.google.com>...
<snip>
> Yes, it almost reads like the authors totally diregard the possibility
> of a pre-20 kyr BP colonization of the Americas via central Canada,
> further assuming that since southern migration through central Canada
> was blocked either by closure of the glaciers or (if not totally
> closed) uninhabitable terrain from ca. 20-13 kyr BP (adjust to your
> preference), then by last resort humans *must* have colonized by the
> coastal (what JC-M calls the "wet") hypothesis to account for Monte
> Verde.

Dar:
  Yes, though they give a fair precis of Jim Burns' work, their
conclusion re: the pre-Late-Wisconsinan persistence of an
"ice-free corridor" seems to contradict Burns' conclusion
(and the same conclusion drawn by other working with
pre-Late-Wisonsinan deposits and fossils elsewhere in Alberta).

  Burns and others:
"These ages plus others from locations northwest and south of Edmonton
indicated that the last Laurentide Ice Sheet was
the only continental ice sheet ever to inundate the Edmonton area and,
by inference, reach the eastern margin of the Cordillera to the west."

  Jackson and Wilson:
"The weight of evidence therefore seems to point to the fact that
the ice-free corridor was a transient feature at best,
of late Pleistocene age."

  The companion article re: the "wet" hypothesis, supposedly by
Hetherington (and others, including Wilson) at
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/feb04/feature_Quest.html
has some odd bits that contradict what Hetherington wrote elsewhere,
so maybe Jackson is the victim of bad ghostwriting.
  My critique of that Geotimes article is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3hghk
  I see that Wilson's Douglas College (where he is Chair of the
Geology Department), has no graduate courses in geology.
  Perhaps he is the weak link in the popular science reporting?

  Whatever, Geotimes is not a great source of detailed info.

> I don't necessarily oppose the "wet" hypothesis, but
> I don't think the "dry" hypothesis is dead, either.

  My sentiments, exactly.

Daryl Krupa