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Post Info TOPIC: Cenote Zacaton


L

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Sacred Maya pools
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Divers plumb the mysteries of sacred Maya pools

Steering clear of crocodiles and navigating around massive submerged trees, a team of divers began mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, which were important to the ancient Maya. In three weeks this May, the divers found fossilised animal remains, bits of pottery and -- in the largest pool explored -- an enormous underwater cave.
This project, led by University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa Lucero and funded by the National Geographic Society and an Arnold O. Beckman Award, was the first of what Lucero hopes will be a series of dives into the pools of the southern Maya lowlands in central Belize. The divers will return this summer to assess whether archaeological excavation is even possible at the bottom of the pools, some of which are more than 60 meters deep.

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RE: Cenote Zacaton
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Cenotes were created by the impact of a meteorite 65 million years ago and today there are more than 3,000 identified cenotes that interconnect and underlie the Yucatan. Many are quite spacious and cavernous formations, connecting underground waterways.

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The Maya called them dzonots (sacred wells). The Spanish mangling the Mayan name called them cenotes. We call them unsurpassable swimming holes.
The Yucatán peninsula, where most of Mexico's cenotes are found, is a geological oddity: a flat limestone slab too porous to hold water on the surface. Rainwater seeps through the stone and carves subterranean channels in the peninsula's foundation. When sinkholes create breaches in the tunnel ceilings, subterranean waters are revealed to the world above.
Divers began surveying these wells and caves in the 1980s, bestowing names that range from the grandiose (Tajmajal) to the whimsical (Carwash, describing its popular use in past years). Thousands of cenotes have been discovered in the Caribbean coastal state of Quintana Roo alone, many linked to the world's three longest underground cave systems. Countless others remain hidden by jungle. Unearthed bones, precious stones and ancient ceramics suggest the ancient Maya used cenotes, regarded as gateways to the underworld, as ceremonial sites.

cavesystems1

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L

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Correction:
The position of the explored sinkhole is:

Latitude: 22.992851° Longitude:   -98.165671°


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NASAs robotic submarine, DEPTHX has mapped the bottom of the worlds deepest sinkhole, or cenote, the El Zacatón.
Entering El Zacatón for the first time this Wednesday, DEPTHX dived down to 270 metres, creating the first map of the giant cavity, which is large enough to swallow New York's Chrysler Building.
The maps showed that the sinkhole has a sloped bottom, about 290 metres at shallowest, which extends down to over 300 metres.
Researchers said this meant that the two drivers, Sheck Exley and Jim Bowden, who made a record-breaking scuba dive in 1994 in search of the bottom, were just a few metres off the sloping floor. Bowden set a new scuba depth record of 281.94 metres, while Exley died at a depth just a few metres shallower.
Scientists further said the sinkhole could be connected to even deeper caverns, adding that at the bottom of the slope was an area DEPTHX could not probe.

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Scientists this week begin the final leg of a five-year, NASA-funded mission to reach the bottom of Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, the worlds deepest known sinkhole.
No one has ever reached bottom and at least one diver has died in the attempt. Scientists want to learn more about Cenote Zacatón's physical dimensions, the geothermal vents that feed it and the forms of life that exist in its murky depths.

The missions progress can be monitored at two Web sites: geology.com,  and the Robotics Institutes DEPTHX Web site, www.frc.ri.cmu.edu, which will feature daily updates, images and graphics.

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El Zacatón
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It may not show up on MapQuest, but NASA scientists are betting that the best route to Jupiter and its ice-crusted moon Europa runs through an underwater cavern in Mexico.
Though the space mission is probably 30 years off, the trek begins in earnest today outside the city of Tampico. A 60-ton crane is scheduled to lower a giant orange robot dubbed "Clementine" into what is believed to be the deepest flooded sinkhole in the world.
For the next two weeks, the fully autonomous robot, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a Volkswagen Beetle, will plumb the previously inaccessible microbial mysteries of the sinkhole -- or "cenote" -- El Zacatón.

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Cenote Zacaton
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Scientists return this week to the world’s deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth’s most extreme regions and potentially in outer space.
If all goes well with this second round of testing and exploration, the team will return in May for a full-scale exploration of the Zacatón system.
Sinking more than 1,000 feet, Zacatón has only been partially mapped and its true depth remains unknown.

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98.16076W_22.99300N
Expand (97kb, 800 x 562)

Latitude: 22.993135° Longitude: -98.161352°

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