Architect-426 would be especially keen to know that Charles Darwin's direct observations of the February 20, 1835 earthquake in Chile contributed to geologists' ability to
expect the later quake.
That argument is made
here.
Remarkably,
Darwin also rebutted Archtect-426's arguments 175 years before he made them, drawing brilliant conclusions from simple, "commonsense" observations.
Darwin also used the observations from that quake to help reach his conclusions about the great age of the earth, to explain how sea shells were found on mountaintops, and to speculate that the earth's crust floated on molten rock.
Here's a passage from
CNN's report:
quote:
Darwin spent the next weeks investigating the effects of the earthquake. He found that rocks lined with recent marine shells were now elevated above the tide. The island of Santa Maria was raised an average of about 3 meters (9 feet).
Combining his own observations with those of many local people, Darwin attempted to reconstruct the event and to understand why it had occurred. He found that three volcanoes had erupted along the Chilean coast at about the same time as the earthquake.
Not only did he collect widespread evidence of the uplift of the coast during the earthquake, but traveling inland and into the mountains, he discovered a series of remains of marine shells -- proof that the shifting that had recently uplifted the coast by a small amount had occurred over and over in the recent geological past.
The experience convinced him that the great geologist Charles Lyell was right -- mountain chains were not created by sudden immense catastrophes, but grew almost imperceptibly, the product of thousands of successive uplifts over almost endless geological time.
Even more ambitiously, Darwin later came to connect earthquakes, volcanoes and vertical movements of the Earth's crust as the results of same great unknown subterranean phenomena. In an ambitious and important scientific paper published after the voyage, Darwin concluded that "this large portion of the earth's crust floats in a like manner on a sea of molten rock" and indeed that it was likely this was true of "the entire globe."
Charles "One Man Creationism Wrecking Crew" Darwin, as it turns out, was a remarkable geologist.
Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.
Edited by Omnivorous, : Realized I don't have to accept that ignorant subtitle.
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