CompuServe Messages

Hi, Kamron– The ocean basins would have to be empty for a long time to let those canyons be cut into the continental shelf. If the ocean basins were empty only a short time and something rapidly dumped the entire oceans-full of water onto the continents, it would just flow off all edges, not bothering to follow river-courses. That the deep cuts in the shelf have a rough one-to-one correspondence with major modern rivers suggests that they were cut by flows not hugely greater than modern river flows. A few times modern flow rates, say as glaciers melt, is one thing, but the flows cannot be multiple orders of magnitude greater. For near-modern flow levels to cut such canyons surely would need considerable time. –Doug