The controversial idea that space impacts may have wiped out woolly mammoths and early human settlers in North America has received new impetus. Nano-diamonds and other exotic impact materials have been unearthed in thin sediments, Science magazine reports.
The age of these materials coincides with the start of a millennium-long climate cooling event known as the Younger Dryas – some 13,000 years ago. Many large animals vanish from the archaeological record at this time. It is also the period in Earth history that sees the demise of Clovis culture – the prehistoric civilisation that many regard as the first human occupation of North America…
Doug Kennett doubts the theories of over-hunting, climate change and disease used to account for their extinction. There are not enough Clovis kill sites to suggest that the animals were over-hunted, for example, he said.
The animals’ disappearance coincides with that of Clovis artefacts in the archaeological record 12,900 years ago. Prehistoric Clovis Indians lived broadly across North America for a few hundred years. They were big game hunters, who introduced a sophisticated new Stone Age technology – the fluted spear point, known today as the Clovis Point.
The Paleo-Indians vanish at the onset of the post-Ice Age Younger Dryas, or Big Freeze, that snapped Earth back to near glacial conditions, where it lingered for about 1,200 years. The causes of the woolly mammoth extinction, the collapse of Clovis culture and the onset of the cold snap have long been debated. But only the impact theory accounts for the simultaneous occurrence of all three, said Doug Kennett.
I thought that the animals having vanished around that time (13k years ago) was due to the cave men driving fossil fuel powered vehicles and all the cows farting in the pastures…
The biggest chuckle is all the TV talking heads – reading headlines about comets and presuming some enormous explosion rather than a mini ice age of about 1200 years being the cause of the extinction.
I’ll leave the cow farts to the Republikans.
SARCASM ON
12,900 years ago? That was before God made the Earth.
SARCASM OFF
I think it’s time for another one to hit earth and wipe us out.
Our civilization does not deserve to know more about this universe and life since we’re not appreciating it anyways and fight each other and other imbalances in our political and social structure
There might be 1+ million other civilizations in our milky way galaxy alone so nobody will cry after us.
A comet is mostly water and ammonia. They probably all died of the stench. Can someone die of smell? Yeah, maybe.
That was just God plowing the land for the Pilgrims’ arrival.
There might be 1 + Million– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– – – wait for it – – – – – – –
CIVILIATIONS in the milkyway.
and #4 Brett claims “we don’t deserve to know more.”
Saturday Blog Humor. Well Done Brett.
It’s Friday, Bobo.
#8–Damn Mustard, your simple grace has destroyed my imagined credibility. I wonder what set theory has to say about that?
Something interesting to find out, would be to GET to the MOON, GET to MARS, and check around for OTHER CRATERS that could have been in the same time..
To judge if this was a RAIN of meteors that raced threw the system, or a random HIT from a loose flying Boulder from our OWN system.
This theory has enormous holes in it also.
When a meteor large enough to wipe out a civilization and the mammoths hits ANY part of the earth, it will affect ALL parts of the earth.
So, for this theory to hold, we would also have to see similar effects all across the world and in particular the Northern Hemisphere. Are there similar mass extinctions in Siberia?
#11 Correct. If it could hit where they think it did and take out everything all the way to Baja, Europe would have had major problems also.
Twelve-thousand-nine-hundred years ago, in January? I do not recall a comet striking earth but that my just be my memory fading.
Pat Robertson said it was God punishing the liberal gay woolly mammoths.
#14
God killed them because they went from using afros to sporting Jeri Curls.
Epic of Gilgamesh hints at it being a Nuclear war, not a comet.
No, no, no!
This happened just before the great flood. It wasn’t rock, it was water. 40 days and 40 nights later, Gosh sent a sign that he’d never send a comet again.
Aren’t rainbows beautiful?
#13, Sparky,
Twelve-thousand-nine-hundred years ago, in January? I do not recall a comet striking earth but that my just be my memory fading.
You don’t remember? It was right after that day it rained. The day Jimy Heel got caught doing the beep beep while Bubba was on a hunting trip?
Different species went out at defferent places and times. Saber tooth were still in TN 9,000 years ago. Mammoth outlast most of the mega fauna.
I don’t know if the blast happened or not but it isn’t what killed the mammoth in Eurasia.
It would be interesting to see what other possibilities there are for the layer of micro-diamonds. I am skeptical because a mass of explosions large enough to cause a mini-ice age should have been noticeable across the globe, not just in north america.
Not that we aren’t special or anything, but micro-anything gets spread by trade winds fairly quickly.
I have to scratch my head at the considerable effort that scientist go to in order to pick ONE, SINGLE event to cause something major. Most likely there WAS a comet event — which then caused an oceanic disturbance that over several hundred years dropped the temperatures by enough to cause another ice age. Animals that were caught in the stresses died, and since many of the mega-creatures seem to have been long-lived with few cubs, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few generations for them to die out.
Prehistoric folks then would have lost their primary food sources, and since they were not primarily agrarian they would have either died out or moved to find more wildlife or fish.
I see about four or five cause and effects there, if not more. But hey, it has to be ONE event to cause everything, otherwise all of science’s panties get in an uproar. And then religion gets all pissy because the spaghetti monster didn’t think of it first and smote them.
One could only hope we get hit soon. It would be worth it to see the global warming scam get overpowered by something real and important.
I’m gonna start me an ark legend…
My uncle dug a cistern in Adams County, Ohio in 1948 and found a layer of carbon about five feet down.