Now I know that Alfred Wegener`s theory is wrong!

I'm somewhat surprised that you are incapable of writing even a brief response to Edge's question when this thread is supposedly based on your research.Are you not familiar enough with your own research to provide us with even one piece of evidence to support the assertion that ice covered the Sahara 13,000 years ago?

Are you aware of the existence of island arcs, accreted terranes, etc.?

Aspevik, it's not that the geos don't care about these findings. They do. It's that geos, like all scientists, change their minds when the evidence warrants it. The paper you posted is very interesting and appears to have some merit, but has more research been carried out that continues to support it? Has it been thrown out over the last 10 years?I personally have never even heard of this theory, but that's not surprising considering the difficulty in keeping up with all the research. There are many, many fields within geology and most of us read research that is pertinent to our own specializations. And the great majority of scientists do live and work by these principles, but scientists are naturally tentative and skeptical of new ideas. They have to be. They can't be jumping from one idea to another every time someone presents something new -- and pretty much every scientist does so at one time or another. It takes time. Sometimes a long time before new ideas have the evidence required for the rest of the world to take notice of them. You've obviously not met many geologists. lol

Do you have an explanation for why those gold deposits occur there?

1. You are locating Proterozoic aged fossils on Pangea, which did not exist until the Paleozoic and into the Mesozoic. These organisms lived, what... 200+ million years prior to the formation of Pangea. Why are you plotting them on a map of Pangea?The reason you have Ediacaran fossils so far inland is because that's where the fossil-bearing rocks ended up 200+ million years after they were deposited as oceanic sediments and lithified. Five hundred million plus years ago, those Ediacaran life forms were swimming around an ocean, died, were buried, and the sediments eventually lithified. Those lithified sediments/rocks containing Ediacaran fossils were eventually uplifted and moved around on the continents until they came to rest where they've been discovered.2. Why are the Ediacara biota in different locations in the maps? On your map, there are no longer any fossils in India and they are in different location in South America. Seems to me you've moved those little red dots and deleted some to improve your *pattern*.

You know, we can see a pattern in the types of ore deposits (not just gold) for many of the precious and base-metals over time -- starting from the Archean to the Tertiary. Based on the age of the rocks, the depositional environments, the lithologies, and/or the historical tectonic setting, we know what sorts of deposits to look for. And this exploration method is very successful.In addition, that would have to be one horrific impact to cause fracturing of the rocks throughout all the continents. Don't you think?

Of course we can. We know ages, depths of formation, pressures of formation, what minerals came first through last, depositional settings, tectonic settings, plus a whole lot more. In addition, not all gold deposits are vein deposits (e.g., sedimentary-rock hosted gold, greenstone gold, banded iron, intrusion related). As edge noted, you are mixing up your gold deposits. Ahhhh... I see what you've done. I was wondering why I didn't see Grasberg, Telfer, Carlin, the Wit, etc. You've plotted mining operations of the the company called Gold Fields, not the largest gold fields in the world.It seems your research skills could use a little sharpening.

Please cite the source of your "gold fields" data.

I don't accept the fields you've shown in your images because the mines you named in Message 42 are not the largest gold fields in the world. I discovered why you made that mistake and I see you have not acknowledged that fact yet.I'd like to know the source of your data and how exactly you plotted the locations of the gold deposits on your images.Did you use spatial data? What software are you using?I ask because I see you have a lot of red dots in the southwestern U.S. (which don't appear very consistent between the two images), because as far as I'm aware, that part of the country doesn't have any world class gold deposits. They have world class copper deposits, however. And that mine located at the top of Alaska looks suspiciously like the location for the world class Red Dog mine, only that one is zinc, not gold. I certainly could be wrong as I can't remember the location of all the large gold deposits, so please cite the source of your data and how you plotted the locations on your images.

Thank you.I still don't see how you got the Alaska and U.S. data, however.Have you realized your mistake yet, Aspevik, with regards to the gold data?Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

Not to mention ironic!

May I assume you recognized your mistake with respect to the gold deposit data?The USGS as well as the British Columbia Geological Survey have some good data regarding global ore deposits. I'm just not sure how useful you will find it without ArcMap.

Geez, can you imagine finding those gold veins? I would imagine they'd be immense and possibly worth the exploration costs.How deep are these veins and what is the evidence for their existence?

This is a very simplistic description of what has happened to the earth. The earth's interior is differentiated based on chemistry and density as a result of cooling and fractionation. But the earth is a dynamic system and mantle processes did not stop or cool entirely, unlike smaller planets. Therefore mixing and interaction between the various horizons within the earth's interior and surface has occurred in the past and continues to occur today (e.g., hot spots).The core may have a substantial quantity of gold (and other metals), that's certainly plausible. The mantle has less, though it may replenish itself from the core, but there is little evidence that it exists in liquid form -- as in molten liquid gold -- within the mantle. So you're saying that these fractures, resulting from the impact, extend all the way from the surface of the earth down 2500+ km to the outer core?And that liquid gold migrated up these fractures, unimpinged, through the mantle -- sometimes up to the crust? What about all the other metals?I'm having a hard time believing such a massive impact wouldn't just have destroyed the earth.When was this supposed to have happened?

Nobody is discounting the likelihood of a substantial amount of gold and other precious metals in the earth's core. Aspevik, are you are still claiming those deposits as the largest gold fields in the world? With the exception of Tarkwa and the Wit deposits, the rest should be removed.You are basically picking and choosing which deposits to present on your map based on their proximity to your alleged impact site. Not whether they are in fact the largest gold mines in the world. And why are you not depicting the largest platinum mines, or copper mines, or other metallic mines? Why just gold?