Saturday, December 25, 2010

[Geology2] Egypt's Lost Great Lake

Space Shuttle Images Reveal Egypt's Lost Great Lake

A huge lake once waxed and waned deep in the sandy heart of the Egyptian
Sahara, geologists have found. Radar images taken from the space shuttle
confirm that a lake broader than Lake Erie once sprawled a few hundred
kilometers west of the Nile, researchers report in the December issue of
Geology. Since the lake first appeared around 250,000 years ago, it
would have ballooned and shrunk until finally petering out around 80,000
years ago.

Knowing where and when such oases existed could help archaeologists
understand the environment Homo sapiens traveled while migrating out of
Africa for the first time, says team leader Ted Maxwell, a geologist at
the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Modern
humans arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

Read more:
http://ow.ly/3i81K

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