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The scientific community estimates the earth is about 4.7 billion years old, and the oldest exposed rocks in Yellowstone National Park are 2.7 billion years old. I will write more about geologic age estimates later. As an introduction, the jig saw puzzle which scientists have put together at Yellowstone shows there was a very large magma chamber in the crust, which gradually built up pressure and temperature, lifting about 600,000 acres (2,400 square km) of the Rocky Mountains until there was a major volcanic eruption. The giant volcanic flows in the Snake River Pains of Idaho are related to this and subsequent eruptions from this magma chamber. After the initial eruption, and the associated release of temperature, pressure, and volcanic rocks, the central portion of the uplift collapsed, creating the Yellowstone caldera. The hot springs, geysers, mud pots and the other hydrothermal phenomena Yellowstone National Park is so famous for are remnants of this large magma chamber's breach of the Earth's crust. There are still pockets of magma. They heat water, and the hot water creates the geologic activity at Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone Lake sits in this caldera.

Looking at the layering of mud in the bottom of a lake is similar to counting tree rings. These layers are too thin to see with reflection seismic wavelets. However, the big picture of where sediments have been deposited can be determined from the high resolution seismic. Using the maps I created in 1974, I estimate Yellowstone Lake has 225 square km of surface coverage (over 55,000 acres). Depositing 0.0709 inches of sediment over this entire area, every year for 1,000 years, deposits in excess of 14 billion cubic feet of sediment. Removing the up to 255 feet of water in the lake, I calculate approximately 370 billion cubic feet of sediment have been deposited in the lake since the caldera was formed. Having grown up on the back end of a shovel, irrigating a farm in Southern Utah, I know first hand this is a lot of dirt.

To put it in perspective, just north of Yellowstone Lake the Yellowstone River has cut the Yellowstone Grand Canyon, which eventually makes its way into the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. This "V" shaped canyon is 1,000 feet deep and 24 miles long. Around 4,000 feet of sediment have been eroded across the top of the "V," along with all of the sediment in the "V" down to the current river location This one canyon has had over 250 billion cubic feet of sediment removed from it. Going back up river to the Lake, with the gross assumption of a constant 14 billion cubic feet of sediment deposited every 1,000 years, means it would take over 27,000 years to fill up Yellowstone Lake to it's current level of sedimentation. Between three identified ice ages, the historically smaller drainage area prior to erosion and the accompanying smaller sediment supply from smaller drainage areas, the age derived from this constant rate of sediment fill is too low by a factor of 24, when compared to other methods used to determine geologic age for this area. Geoscientists have dated the formation of the caldera at 630 thousand years ago.

timedex infinite grid

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