Was reading this article and it seems to give quite some conclusive evidence that the bimini road IS beach rock formation.
A contact of mine pointed this article out to me and said this with it:
his is beachrock, the formation and composition of which is discused in this article from the
Skeptical Inquirerwith
especial reference to Bimini (note particularly the stuff on pages 3-4
about the bedding planes). The form of the blocks into which the layers
are fragmented are caused by the geological phenomenon called
'jointing' (please look it up).
For "anchors" read "stones
with holes in them" and ask yourself if the one shown on the
"Mysterious America" (sic) website has an artificially made hole or a
natural one, and whether such a stone would actually serve as an anchor
for all but the smallest dinghy on a calm day. Also bearing tropical
storms in mind, how long would a 'breakwater' on the Atlantic coast
survive which relies on the stones being wedged in with little rocks
like the one shown and which apparently the divers removed with little
poroblem?
The stone "columns" later turned out to be sunken cylinders of solidified Portland Cement...
Now for the article:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_28/ai_111897966/pg_1
Interesting parts:
We cored two of the huge stones and demonstrated to our satisfaction that they were indeed beachrock.
Beachrock is rock that forms near mid-tide level beneath the sand
on tropical beaches. It is a very distinctive rock that forms rapidly.
Tidal fluctuation constantly forces calcium carbonate-rich waters
through the sands where evaporation and off-gassing of carbon dioxide
probably help stimulate precipitation of calcium carbonate. Within a
few years, crystals of aragonite, a common marine form of calcium
carbonate, precipitate between the grains, welding them together to
form a very hard limestone. There are beach rocks around some Pacific
islands that contain human skeletons and shell casings from World War
II. At Bimini and along other Bahamian islands, many swimming beaches
are lined with beachrock that is forming today. They contain imbedded
Coke and beer bottles. When sea level rises, as it has done during the
past 18,000 yeas, any beachrock that formed several thousand years ago
becomes submerged. Such is the case with the supposed Atlantis stones
off North Bimini.
When our drill cores showed the older beachrock was identical to
that forming on the main swimming beach at Bimini, there was much
concern. Whereas the modern rock contains discarded bottles, there were
no artifacts, no wheel ruts, or any other evidence of an ancient
civilization in or around the fifteen-foot-deep site. We thought the
quest was over and there would be no more fun weekends in Bimini.
Instead it was just the beginning of a long adventure that continues
today.
When confronted with the beachrock evidence, Tompkins posed a
difficult question: "What if beachrock was the only building material
available for the Atlanteans?" We needed an answer, so we approached
the question using forensic geology. If the stones had not been moved
since they formed, they should all contain beach sand stratification
dipping in the same direction as when it formed, i.e., toward deep
water. If the stones, had been placed by humans, then internal
stratification probably would dip in different directions. We reasoned
that Atlanteans, although reputed to have had advanced technology, were
not aware of internal stratification within beaches and beachrock. If
they fitted the stones, they surely would have selected for the best
fit. Thus, some stones should contain stratification dipping the wrong
way. Our plan was to take seventeen oriented cores from separate
adjacent stones. Soon we had a real expedition planned, and a local PBS
station was brought in by Tompkins to supervise a documentary.
Analyzing the Atlantis Beachrock
We survived it all, completed our weekend mission, took the cores
home, and later sawed the oriented cores with a diamond rock saw. The
rock slabs were x-radiographed to reveal internal stratification. Sure
enough, all the cores showed consistent dipping of strata toward the
deep water, and distinctive layers of rounded beach pebbles could be
traced from one stone to another. To better appreciate what this means,
let me explain a little about beachrock formation.
Beachrock forms beneath the sand in the intertidal zone. Nearly all
beach sands have distinctive stratification that dips downward toward
the water. When the sand is converted to rock, stratification is
preserved. Usually one does not see the rock forming on beaches because
it forms out of sight beneath the sand, As more sand is added, the
beach builds out with the rock following just beneath. However, if
conditions change and the beach is eroded, the rock is exposed. Algae
grow on its surface, usually turning the rock dark grey or black. After
a few years in the sun, the rock layers, usually about one-foot thick,
crack much like old concrete roads and sidewalks. The pieces can be
large, up to twelve feet in length and four to six feet wide. With
continued erosion by wave-driven beach sand, the cracks enlarge and
take on a rounded shape. The result is rows of huge pillow-shaped
stones that appear to have been fitted neatly together, much like the
stone walls high in the mountains at the Peruvian ruins of Machu
Picchu. If the beach makes a turn, such as when a curved spit forms,
the beachrock follows. At the south end of the long row of stones off
Bimini the beachrock curves to form a huge "J." True believer Edward
Zink thought the J shape had special meaning. Some say it was built to
form an Atlantean harbor.
Later in 1980, I co-authored a paper in Nature with Marshal McKusick
(McKusick and Shinn 1980). We presented carbon-14 data showing that the
stones (ages range from 2,000 to 4,000 years) are much too young.
Atlantis was presumably a 7,000-year-old story when first told to
Plato. The rock is actually younger because the material we dated
consisted of conch shell fragments cemented within the rock. These
materials would have been lying on the beach and predated the
cementation process that produced the rock. We did not have the new
mass accelerator dating methods that today allow dating of the tiny
individual crystals that formed the rock. It is clear the actual time
of rock formation would have been some time after the conch shell was
deposited on the beach.
There were also other items in the area. An earlier letter to Nature
(Harrison 1971) showed that so-called columns on a site about two miles
from the stones were made of Portland cement. In the 1800s, cement was
carried on ships in wood barrels. When discarded, the wood rotted away,
leaving a hard cement column. Needless to say, none of these
publications changed the minds of "true believers.
Since our original adventure, I have seen similar straight lines of
broken pavement-like stones and have photographed similar features from
the Alvin submarine in 5,000 feet of water. Many more offshore
beachrock sites have been found in the Bahamas, and I have photographed
a large field of the "megaliths," as true believers call them, off the
western end of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. There are exact duplicates
around islands on the Australian Barrier Reef, and a geologically
fahttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_28/ai_111897966/pg_1mous example at the Dry Tortugas off Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. I
took a film team from Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of series to the
Tortugas to film and demonstrate that the beachrock there was the same
as at Bimini. That 1970s program still airs occasionally but seems not
to have influenced the true believers. In fact, several of them appear
in the program. One talks of finding a half-buried pyramid on the Great
Bahama Bank. They claim to have entered the pyramid underwater to make
films and then a storm drove them away. Not surprisingly the films were
fogged by the "force field" and the site was buried and could never be
located again! They did recover one of the "power crystals." It was
demonstrated that when a magnet on a stick is placed near the crystal,
the magnet is repelled. The program did not show the electromagnet
hidden under a black cloth just beneath the crystal.