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Enormous Submarine Landslide 60,000 Years Ago Produced The Longest Flow Of Sand And Mud On Earth

Date:
November 22, 2007
Source:
University of Bristol
Summary:
An enormous submarine landslide that disintegrated 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet documented on Earth. The massive submarine flow traveled 1,500 kilometers -- the distance from London to Rome -- before depositing its load.
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An enormous submarine landslide that disintegrated 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet documented on Earth. The massive submarine flow travelled 1,500 kilometres -- the distance from London to Rome -- before depositing its load.

Details of the landslide and consequent sediment flow are reported online in Nature by Dr Peter Talling from the University of Bristol, with colleagues from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and several other institutions.

Dr Talling said: "The volume of sediment transported by this flow in the deep ocean is difficult to comprehend. It was one of the largest movements of material ever to occur on our planet. This mass was ten times that transported to the ocean every year by all of the Earth's rivers. The flow was sometimes over 150 km wide, spread across the open sea floor."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this giant submarine flow is that it travelled hundreds of kilometres without depositing any sediment on the vast expanse of sea floor that it passed over.

Sediment deposition was finally triggered by a remarkably small but abrupt decrease in sea-floor gradient (from 0.05Ú to 0.01Ú). For comparison, most premiership soccer pitches have a gradient of less than 1Ú to help their drainage.

Man is placing more and more structures on the sea floor, including installations for recovering subsurface oil and gas reserves that can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Understanding the cause and evolution of these infrequent undersea flows helps to assess any potential hazards posed to such structures.

Installations involved in oil and gas recovery are typically sited on slopes of greater than 0.05Ú. Cores collected next to these installations to help design their foundations are often used for subsequent geohazard analysis.

This work suggests that a more accurate record of these flows is found by coring in the low-gradient basin plains which may be hundreds of kilometres from the installations.


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Materials provided by University of Bristol. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

University of Bristol. "Enormous Submarine Landslide 60,000 Years Ago Produced The Longest Flow Of Sand And Mud On Earth." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 November 2007. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071121145010.htm>.
University of Bristol. (2007, November 22). Enormous Submarine Landslide 60,000 Years Ago Produced The Longest Flow Of Sand And Mud On Earth. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071121145010.htm
University of Bristol. "Enormous Submarine Landslide 60,000 Years Ago Produced The Longest Flow Of Sand And Mud On Earth." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071121145010.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

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