I was never convinced by the explanation for radiocarbon dating problems in Great Lakes region posited by that early paper.
A subsequent article in the Mammoth Trumpet seems to be pretty convincing. This is: Update: Article Questioning Radiocarbon-dating Accuracy Draws Fire from Scientists.
The real meat of the article is Brief Comments on "Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times," by Richard B. Firestone and William Topping, written by John R. Southon and R. E. Taylor. Firestone has a response following, but I think I would follow Southon and Taylor in this one. I don't know Southon, but Taylor has been at this for many years and is not known for going off on wild goose chases.
All of this is reinforced by the most recent article (Goodyear et al. 2007).
There still may be some problem with some radiocarbon dating in the Great Lakes region, but this article may hold the key to understanding just what that problem is.
The meteor or some other ET strike at about 12,900 years ago seems to be a good explanation for a lot of things.
I think these folks may be on the right track--they have a lot of data, and that's always a good start!
Yes indeed. So, from this I gather you would accept the notion that an impact/air burst from an errant space traveler could affect carbon dating? What little of the evidence I was able to understand seems to support that.
Another item; while doing some scouting around the web to see if there were other areas in the world affected by this event -- holy cow! Mega die-offs in much of the world of large critters INCLUDING the southern hemisphere, all at roughly the same time -- in all probability, a single event. This one was a biggie that seems to have been all but ignored until Firestone et al started making waves. Even at that it's been nearly 20 years since they began work on it, and about 6 years since their first publication.
Which all seems pretty odd when you consider this event occurred almost under our noses during what is generally considered historcal times. Some of our early ancestors actually lived through it! Must have been quite a show.