Alaska

March 27th, 1964: the world's second-most powerful recorded earthquake hits [Alaska:America] . "In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, buildings collapse. Streets and homes slip into the Earth...Out in the Gulf of Alaska, the ocean bottom seems to sink. Then heaves [upward:upper] 50 feet, sending a giant wave towards shore.""What happened was the whole Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound just sort of tilted, and so near shore, near Alaska, that region [sink:descend] . And then out at sea, the sea floor raised up." Susie Bassham, a [molecular:minute] biologist at the University of Oregon. "And so things that were submarine platforms before suddenly were lifted above sea level, and then silt could come in and build more island."And with more island, came new [freshwater:rising] ponds. Those newly created bodies of water turned out to be the testbed for a natural evolutionary experiment on a finger-sized fish, called the three-spined [stickleback:shark] .