Posted on 07/23/2009 7:00:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Researchers have found shock-synthesized hexagonal diamonds on one of California's Channel Islands, which they say is the strongest evidence yet that a comet exploded in the atmosphere above North America, causing widespread extinctions there around 12,900 years ago... In 2007 researchers theorized that a comet set off continental fires that led to the mysterious disappearance of the Clovis people and the extermination of 35 mammal genera, including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths and camels. The team documented a "black mat" of charcoal throughout North America that contains high levels of iridium, magnetic spheres, and nano-diamonds, which are consistent with such an airburst. The controversial theory also gibes with the 1908 Tunguska atmospheric detonation (also thought to be from a comet or meteorite) that leveled trees in Siberia, and it echoes the extraterrestrial impact widely believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Today, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same team reports on shock-synthesized hexagonal diamonds, known only from meteorite and other impact events, in a soot layer from Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in California. The canyon is famous for containing the earliest human remains in North America, dating back to 13,000 years, and the soot layer coincides with the disappearance of the pygmy mammoth from the island. In a documentary shown earlier this year on the Public Broadcasting Service's NOVA science show, the team also claimed that they discovered similar diamonds from the Greenland Ice Sheet dating to the same period.
What does the research team have to say about their doubters? "I'm so skeptical about the skeptics," says marine geologist James Kennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara. "We work in a different paradigm where different materials result from different kinds of impacts."
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
I don’t think it was Kennedy. If an Oldsmobile had been involved instead of a Comet...
No, universal health care caused it.
I think that we're series screwed!
13000 years ago - a cataclysm
6200 years ago a giant Flood
We're seriously overdue for global warming to wipe out humanity!!
The Horror of it all!
Diving off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, searching for Barack Obama's Birth Certificate! Mary Jo would be willing to testify, but, uh, well, that's another story.
Yet it still didn't cause as much damage as Obama has in five months.
can you add me to your ping list? I love the study of history...
and where are these muck farms in MI?
It was Jenny Granholm....that turd is the ICE QUEEN !!!
What’s a muck farm, and where in North America are they?
Almost certainly yes.
And I’m fairly convinced it wasn’t just an air burst, that there was a ground impact.
It would explain the Carolina Bays.
We have that covered here:
'Arlington Springs Woman', 13,000 Years Old Human Skeleton, California Island
I don't know what they have to do with this article.
Muck, lotsa muck!
IN ALASKA, to the north of Mount McKlnley, the tallest
mountain in North America, the Tanana River joins the
Yukon. From the Tanana Valley and the valleys of its
tributaries gold is mined out of gravel and “muck.*’ This
muck is a frozen mass of animals and trees.
F. Rainey of the University of Alaska described the
scene: l “Wide cuts, often several miles in length and
sometimes as much as 140 feet in depth, are now being
sluiced out along stream valleys tributary to the Tanana
in the Fairbanks District. In order to reach gold-bearing
gravel beds an overburden of frozen silt or ‘muck’ is
removed with hydraulic giants. This 4 muck’ contains
enormous numbers of frozen bones of extinct animals
such as the mammoth, mastodon, super-bison and
horse.” 2
These animals perished in rather recent times; present
estimates place their extinction at the end of the Ice Age
or in early post-glacial times. The soil of Alaska covered
their bodies together with those of animals of species still
surviving.
1 F. Rainey. “Archaeological Investigation in Central Alaska,” Ameri-
can Antiquity, V (1940), 305.
2 The horse became extinct hi pre-Columbian America; the present
horses in the Western Hemisphere are descendants of imported animals.
1
2 IN THE NORTH
Under what conditions did this great slaughter take
place, in which millions upon millions of animals were
torn limb from limb and mingled with uprooted trees?
F. C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico writes:
“Although the formation of the deposits of muck is not
clear, there is ample evidence that at least portions of this
material were deposited under catastrophic conditions.
Mammal remains are for the most part dismembered and
disarticulated, even though some fragments yet retain,
in their frozen state, portions of ligaments, skin, hair,
and flesh. Twisted and torn trees are piled in splintered
masses. ... At least four considerable layers of volcanic
ash may be traced in these deposits, although they are
extremely warped and distorted. . . .” 3
http://www.archive.org/stream/earthupheaval010880mbp/earthupheaval010880mbp_djvu.txt
I noted that the muck deposits indicate some sort of a gigantic process for which even a global flood might not suffice as a cause. Dwardu Cardona has proposed a radical explanation for them and that involves the Birkland currents associated with the antique solar system.
FROM THE SAME LINK:
EARTH IN UPHEAVAL
Georges Cuvier, the great French paleontologist (1769-
1832), thought that in a vast catastrophe of continental
dimensions the sea overwhelmed the land, the herds of
mammoths perished, and in a second spasmodic move-
ment the sea rushed away, leaving the carcasses behind.
This catastrophe must have been accompanied by a pre-
cipitous drop in temperature; the frost seized the dead
bodies and saved them from decomposition. In some
mammoths, when discovered, even the eyeballs were still
preserved.
Charles Darwin, who denied the occurrence of con-
tinental catastrophes in the past, in a letter to Sir Henry Howorth admitted that the extinction of mammoths in
Siberia was for him an insoluble problem. J. D. Dana,
the leading American geologist of the second half of the
last century, wrote: “The encasing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter’s night, and knew no relenting afterward.”
This site is close to us. (Leanderthal Lady site)
Were they here before or after the dieoff?
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/images/ap5.html
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/prehistory/images/leannes.html
Excellent. Thanks for the input.
The evidence seems to be piling up that this event happened. What seems uncertain is whether the comet made it to the ground or exploded in the air.
...or both — it seems reasonable that multiple chunks arrived, striking in different places over a short period of time.
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