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Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts (and Clovis people)
Live Science ^ | 05/21/07 | Jeanna Bryner

Posted on 05/21/2007 10:16:48 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts

Jeanna Bryner

LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Mon May 21, 9:30 AM ET

An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths.

The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago.

Research, presented today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Acapulco, Mexico, could shed light on major questions about the megafauna extinction, the disappearance of the Clovis people, and an abrupt climate change.

“Based on the distribution of material, it looks like this impact probably occurred in southern Canada near the Great Lakes, over what at that time would have been a major glacier, the Laurentide ice sheet,” said one of the presenters, Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Comet chemistry

They couldn’t find a distinct crater, suggesting the comet burst in the air rather than slamming into Earth. Even an airburst should leave its mark, so the scientists think the Laurentide Ice Sheet absorbed much of the impact.

A much smaller object burst in the air over Siberia in 1908, flattening 800 square miles of forest

Firestone and his colleagues investigated buried carbon-rich layers dating back 12,900 years and blanketing more than 50 areas that span from California through Canada and into Belgium. They found a slew of extraterrestrial markers, including nanodiamonds, which are formed by energetic explosions in space, elevated amounts of the rare element iridium and tiny capsules of glass-like carbon.

“Glass-like carbon is essentially carbon that’s been melted at very high temperatures,” like those from a comet impact, Firestone explained. They also found elevated levels of the rare Earth element iridium that are too high to be from Earth.

Mega die-off

During the last catastrophic animal extinction, more than three-fourths of the large Ice Age animals, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant bears, died out. Scientists have debated for years over the cause of the extinction, with both of the major hypotheses—human overhunting and climate change—insufficient to account for the mega die-off.

An extraterrestrial explosion could have triggered a wave of massive wildfires that reduced to ashes the mastodons of the day, say the scientists. At one site called Murray Springs in Arizona, a well-known Clovis site, the scientists found megafauna covered by the comet debris.

“This black mat drapes over the bones of partially butchered mammoths as if somebody was in the process of working on these animals while they were actually killed,” Firestone told LiveScience in a telephone interview. “And between this black mat and the bones of this mammoth we find this ejecta layer. So it’s as if the [impact] event occurred right on top of these mammoth bones and then this black mat occurs on top of that.”

Once put out, the fires would have left a barren landscape devoid of food for any remaining animals.

“I would argue that most of the megafauna either died or starved after this thing,” Firestone said. “But certainly there must’ve been pockets of survival of large animals even mammoths that may have survived for thousands of years beyond that, ultimately to be hunted to death or whatever happened to them.”

Chill out

The comet theory could also explain the abrupt plunge in temperatures during the Younger Dryas period. Presenters at this AGU symposium argue that the comet impact or explosion would have heated up the area, causing the Laurentide Ice Sheet to melt and send massive amounts of water into the Atlantic Ocean. The input would affect ocean currents, which are responsible for keeping the atmosphere at livable temperatures.

Plus, the massive wildfires would have loaded the atmosphere with Sun-blocking dust, soot, water vapor and nitric oxides. The result would be the abrupt climate cooling.

The evidence for a comet impact is substantial.

“I think the fact that there’s an impact is pretty definite. There are too many markers there for it all to be coincidence or happenstance explanations,” Firestone said, adding, “What will be debated is whether the extent of the impact was sufficient for instance to kill all of the megafauna or whether other factors were also equally important.”

New Recipe: How to Make a Mass Extinction Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming Images: Glaciers Before and After Original Story: Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: astronomy; catastrophism; clovis; clovisimpact; comet; extinction; godsgravesglyphs; iceage; impact; massextinction; megafauna; tunguska; velaincident; youngerdryas
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1 posted on 05/21/2007 10:16:51 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: blam; SunkenCiv

Ping!


2 posted on 05/21/2007 10:17:12 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, kae jong-il, chia head, ppogri, midget sh*tbag)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Wait a cotton-pickin’ second...I thought it was supposed to be Bush’s Fault!!


3 posted on 05/21/2007 10:22:39 PM PDT by JRios1968 (Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will. - Ben Stein)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Gore was right. I just wet myself.


4 posted on 05/21/2007 10:23:35 PM PDT by battlegearboat
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To: JRios1968

Well yeah, of course it was.

You see, it went like this. Rove ordered Bush to have Cheney go back in time and contact the alien overlords that would later hide their manipulating presence behind the corporate behemoth “Haliburton”.

Cheney carried the message to the alien overlords directing them to divert a comet toward earth and destroy the mega fauna and the peaceful nature loving Clovis people.

If the Clovis culture had been allowed to flourish, then the RWDB movement would never have gotten started, due to the overwhelming peaceful and nature loving influence they would spread to all peoples everywhere.

The mega fauna had to go because Rove is allergic to woolly mammoths.


5 posted on 05/21/2007 10:35:14 PM PDT by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Say, isn’t that the same time the Great Sphinx at Giza is thought to have been scarred by falling water?


6 posted on 05/21/2007 10:36:10 PM PDT by Savage Beast (Of all that I have accomplished, the thing that I am proudest of is that I have a good heart. ~Oprah)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

They are finding that bad things fall from the sky with a lot more regularity than previously thought.


7 posted on 05/21/2007 10:38:09 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (Democrat Happens!)
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To: Savage Beast
Re #6

I remember that I heard the same thing while watching a documentary on Sphinx some years ago.

8 posted on 05/21/2007 10:40:15 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, kae jong-il, chia head, ppogri, midget sh*tbag)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
...ultimately to be hunted to death or whatever happened to them.

hunted to death by whom? Gatherer-hunters wearing asbestos suits?

Think I'll go with the whatever.

9 posted on 05/21/2007 10:40:26 PM PDT by Fred Nerks (Fair Dinkum!)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Aha!!! So the solution to global warming is underneath our kitchen sinks.

Oh, not that comet? Um...nevermind.

10 posted on 05/21/2007 10:41:48 PM PDT by MilesVeritatis (War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things...." - John Stuart Mill)
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To: Mike Darancette
Re #7

It shows that 'the fire from sky' is not the work of wacky imagination by ancient folks. It was all too real.

11 posted on 05/21/2007 10:41:48 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, kae jong-il, chia head, ppogri, midget sh*tbag)
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To: MilesVeritatis
Re #10

Just crash a mile-wide rock from Asteroid Belt. Global warming, overpopulation, and man-made pollution all end in seconds. A perfect solution to modern-day concern.:-)

12 posted on 05/21/2007 10:44:30 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, kae jong-il, chia head, ppogri, midget sh*tbag)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Yeah... it killed mammoths that were eating spring buttercups on top of a glacier


13 posted on 05/21/2007 10:48:10 PM PDT by Guyin4Os (My name says Guyin40s but now I have an exotic, daring, new nickname..... Guyin50s)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Hmmm ... one aspect of this makes sense to me.

Something happened, perhaps ten thousand years ago, that led to the human race just dominating earth, in an incredibly short time, after a couple of billion years of life on earth, and a couple of million years of humanoids on earth (by the way I understand things, apologies to those with a different understanding.)

One might suspect that something big went down about then, to cause such a dramatic change in the course of life on earth.

14 posted on 05/21/2007 11:07:44 PM PDT by ThePythonicCow (The Greens steal in fear of pollution, The Reds in fear of greed; Fear arising from a lack of Faith.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Yeah. It was Mystery of the Sphinx, 1993, narrated by Charlton Heston. (I remembered it was Heston; so I looked up his name on imdb.com and then googled it.)

Maybe the comet wiped out more than the mastodons.

Like maybe the Sphinx was just one of the Signs of the Zodiac scattered around the globe and the only one to survive the comet collision. Hmmmm?

15 posted on 05/21/2007 11:17:11 PM PDT by Savage Beast (Of all that I have accomplished, the thing that I am proudest of is that I have a good heart. ~Oprah)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

So this is the method Bush used to take down Building 7!


16 posted on 05/21/2007 11:42:59 PM PDT by Jackson Brown (Conservatives just killed their racehorse in order to let their fortunes ride on a jackass)
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To: TigerLikesRooster; Guyin4Os
It's been 35 years since I read Velikovsky, but IIRC he proposed that a comet-like Venus had a close encounter with Earth which resulted in the two planets having their present orbits, and which caused destruction similar to that described in the article.

He was widely attacked by mainstream science, which claimed that the earth had experienced no major short-term changes for millions of years, ie. no such catastrophic events (Uniformitarianism). Also no explanation for the quick frozen Mammoths found in Siberia, and eaten with relish by Zeks in Soviet gulags, according to Solzhenitsyn.

Velikovsky also predicted that Venus' atmosphere would be very hot with extremely high atmospheric pressure, while MSScience claimed that Venus was a "sister planet" of Earth, and had a similar environment to ours. One of my early MSM moments came when the first Soviet Venus lander was crushed under the high pressure and burned in the high temperature, while NYT wrote that "scientists had long suspected that Venus' atmosphere was hot, under high pressure blah blah blah."

The guy pictured below supposedly made a name for himself by vigorously attacking Velikovsky.


17 posted on 05/22/2007 12:41:51 AM PDT by caveat emptor (Billions and billions)
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To: caveat emptor
Re #17

Ah, Carl Sagan, an alien worshiper.:-)

18 posted on 05/22/2007 1:10:51 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, kae jong-il, chia head, ppogri, midget sh*tbag)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
"...could shed light on major questions about the megafauna extinction, the disappearance of the Clovis people, and an abrupt climate change."

Nah, the Clovis people are in the Ozarks. Just ask some of the Leroy people (their relatives), "You'uns seen Clovis, lately?"
19 posted on 05/22/2007 3:28:09 AM PDT by familyop (cbt. engr. (cbt.--has been))
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To: TigerLikesRooster
 Science Today...
 

An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths.

The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago.

Research, presented today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Acapulco, Mexico, could shed light on major questions about the megafauna extinction, the disappearance of the Clovis people, and an abrupt climate change.

“Based on the distribution of material, it looks like this impact probably occurred in southern Canada near the Great Lakes, over what at that time would have been a major glacier, the Laurentide ice sheet,” said one of the presenters, Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Comet chemistry

They couldn’t find a distinct crater, suggesting the comet burst in the air rather than slamming into Earth. Even an airburst should leave its mark, so the scientists think the Laurentide Ice Sheet absorbed much of the impact.

A much smaller object burst in the air over Siberia in 1908, flattening 800 square miles of forest

Firestone and his colleagues investigated buried carbon-rich layers dating back 12,900 years and blanketing more than 50 areas that span from California through Canada and into Belgium. They found a slew of extraterrestrial markers, including nanodiamonds, which are formed by energetic explosions in space, elevated amounts of the rare element iridium and tiny capsules of glass-like carbon.

“Glass-like carbon is essentially carbon that’s been melted at very high temperatures,” like those from a comet impact, Firestone explained. They also found elevated levels of the rare Earth element iridium that are too high to be from Earth.

Mega die-off

During the last catastrophic animal extinction, more than three-fourths of the large Ice Age animals, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant bears, died out. Scientists have debated for years over the cause of the extinction, with both of the major hypotheses—human overhunting and climate change—insufficient to account for the mega die-off.

An extraterrestrial explosion could have triggered a wave of massive wildfires that reduced to ashes the mastodons of the day, say the scientists. At one site called Murray Springs in Arizona, a well-known Clovis site, the scientists found megafauna covered by the comet debris.

“This black mat drapes over the bones of partially butchered mammoths as if somebody was in the process of working on these animals while they were actually killed,” Firestone told LiveScience in a telephone interview. “And between this black mat and the bones of this mammoth we find this ejecta layer. So it’s as if the [impact] event occurred right on top of these mammoth bones and then this black mat occurs on top of that.”

Once put out, the fires would have left a barren landscape devoid of food for any remaining animals.

“I would argue that most of the megafauna either died or starved after this thing,” Firestone said. “But certainly there must’ve been pockets of survival of large animals even mammoths that may have survived for thousands of years beyond that, ultimately to be hunted to death or whatever happened to them.”

Chill out

The comet theory could also explain the abrupt plunge in temperatures during the Younger Dryas period. Presenters at this AGU symposium argue that the comet impact or explosion would have heated up the area, causing the Laurentide Ice Sheet to melt and send massive amounts of water into the Atlantic Ocean. The input would affect ocean currents, which are responsible for keeping the atmosphere at livable temperatures.

Plus, the massive wildfires would have  loaded the atmosphere with Sun-blocking dust, soot, water vapor and nitric oxides. The result would be the abrupt climate cooling.

The evidence for a comet impact is substantial.

“I think the fact that there’s an impact is pretty definite. There are too many markers there for it all to be coincidence or happenstance explanations,” Firestone said, adding, “What will be debated is whether the extent of the impact was sufficient for instance to kill all of the megafauna or whether other factors were also equally important.” 

 

20 posted on 05/22/2007 5:08:52 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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