Imagine the river that passes through your city, flowing backwards after years! True, imagination has no boundaries and can be the bizarre. But, fact is stranger then imagination! You will agree with this opinion only after going through this study.
Do you know, South America’s Amazon River flowing in an easterly direction across the continent, dumping water into the Atlantic Ocean, flowed from east-to-west in eons past?! Not just that! For a time, it also flowed in both directions at once, according to a new study.
It all happened when dinosaurs still walked the Earth, i.e. about 100 million years ago – and the phenomenon started during the middle of the Cretaceous Period. The discovery of the Amazon’s reverse flow in ancient times was accidental, when scientists were studying river to determine the speed at which sediment is ferried toward the Atlantic.
The following diagrams show the different directions the Amazon River flowed at different times in the Earth’s history…
Credit: Russell Mapes, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
To know how the river changed course, read this.