Cretaceous Water

Do you want to taste 35000000 ( Thirty five Million) years old water? The one with such strange wish will not be consider drunken. Scientist have just made it possible by finding an old reservoir of water that dates back to Cretaceous age nearly some 35000000 years old. Amazing discovery.

Swimming Reptiles may be gone, but waters of their ocean remains!

Thirty-five million years ago, that’s the Eocene to you, an asteroid or comet hit the earth making a 137 km diameter hole which now makes up a lot of Chesapeake Bay. This in itself is an earth event of spectacular importance. Ejecta was sent everywhere, tsunamis pounded the Blue Ridge Mountains, extinction was rampant among marine creatures and land mammals. But…


While fracturing 11 km depth of bedrock, the impact event managed to seal off an old reservoir of sea water, preserving it much like an ancient bug in amber. Again, this is nice, but…

But… studies of the salty water found at a depth today of 1km by the USGS deduce that this water is actually REAL seawater of the Cretaceous!

These waters were held in sediments that collected in the ocean’s depths. The water is far saltier than today’s oceans, twice as salty. It’s ratio of chloride and bromide peg it as ocean water. Ocean water accrues helium with age, and the amount of helium found within these waters requires 100 to 150 million years to accumulate…

Which places us back into the Cretaceous. When the Atlantic was young, when reptiles were swimming monsters and dinosaurs testing the waters along the beach at its edge with their toes, these waters made up the ancient oceans of the earth.

Some useful references for further readings:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7475/full/nature12714.html
http://earthsky.org/science-wire/earths-oldest-large-body-of-seawater-identified-under-chesapeake-bay?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=6ce90d32a5-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-6ce90d32a5-393730545
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113011029/impact-crater-oldest-seawater-chesapeake-bay-112213/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1113_chesapeakcrater.html