Among others, Velikovsky tried it through his studies of myths and legends; Hapgood tried it; Hugh Brown attempted, and in the process amassed a tremendous Library of geological data.

Every time the cataclysmic concept has risen, the “beast ” has been stoned, burned at the stake, beaten to a pulp, and buried with a vengeance; but the corpse won’t stay dead. Each time, it raises the lid of its coffin and says in sepulchral tones: “You will die before I.”

The latest of the challengers is Prof. Frank C. Hibben, who in his book, The Lost Americans*, said:

… This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. I his death was catastrophic and all inclusive….What caused the death of forty million animals….….The “corpus delicti” in this mystery may be found almost anywhere.

Their bones lie bleaching in the sands of Florida and in the gravels of New Jersey. They weather out of the diy terraces of Texas and protrude from the sticky ooze of the tar pits off Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles…. The bodies of the victims are everywhere….We find literally thousands together….young and old, foal with dim, calf with cow The muck pits of Alaska are Idled with evidence of universal death….a picture of quick extinction….Any argument to the cause….must apply to North America, Siberia, and Europe as well.

*Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, Apollo Edition, 1961

13

“…Mammoth and bison were torn and twisted as though by a cosmic hand in a godly rage.

“…In many places the Alaskan muck blanket is packed with animal bones and debris in trainload lots.. mammoth, mastodon,….bison, horses, wolves, bears, and lions….A faunal population….in the middle of some cataclysmic catastrophe…. was suddenly frozen… in a grim charade.”

Supernatural winds; volcanic burning; inundation and burial in muck; preservation by deep-freeze of both torn-up animals and muck. “Any good solution to a consuming mystery must answer all of the facts,” challenges Hibben.

The challenge wouldn’t leave me alone. Like a hunger, it gnawed at my subconscious. I could hear the deep tones of Cuvier’s challenge, “find the cause of these events,” still reverberating through the sacred halls of science, ghostly, unanswered. I felt Hibben’s challenge, prodding: “….answer all of the facts.”

I decided that this cataclysmic concept, this catastrophic end which visits our planet time after time, needed verification or refutation once and for all.

The first step was to gather all of the known, accepted data from as many sciences pertaining to our planet as possible: stratigraphy, archaeology, radiology,

14

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109