Geological disconformity found at Bimini, Bahamas, reveals 120K-yr-old land surface at shallow depth

Abstract

In a 1971 Nature paper (Harrison 1971) entitled “Atlantis Undiscovered — Bimini, Bahamas,” I reported on beachrock, marble, and cement materials lying offshore at shallow depth to the west of North Bimini. I concluded that these materials were too young to reflect a supposed ancient culture. In March 2007, J. Eagle and I cored three exploratory boreholes to 50-ft depths in the Bimini Inlet (Fig. 1). The rocks encountered were far too old to fit with a curve for Holocene sea-level rise in the broader Caribbean (includes the Bahamas). Instead, C-14 and fossil-coral age dating, and stratigraphic information, indicate that a significant disconformity is present beneath the Bimini Islands. A reasonable implication of the missing rocks is that during a period of time covering perhaps 800,000 years — or a minimum of 120,000 years at the least — an ancient land surface in the Bimini area could have been above sea-level during the Pleistocene continental glaciations. This old land surface would have been available for human habitation for upwards of the last 120,000 years, at a minimum.