Posted on 06/02/2007 3:14:23 PM PDT by blam
Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did a comet blow up over eastern Canada?
Sid Perkins
Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth's atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America's ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say.
IT'S IN THERE. A layer of carbon-rich sediment (arrow) found here at Murray Springs, Ariz., and elsewhere across North America, provides evidence that an extraterrestrial object blew up over Canada 12,900 years ago. The hallmarks include lumps of glasslike carbon (top), carbon spherules (middle, in cross section), and magnetic grains rich in iridium (bottom). West; (middle inset): Cannon Microprobe
At sites stretching from California to the Carolinas and as far north as Alberta and Saskatchewan—many of which were home to prehistoric people of the Clovis culture—researchers have long noted an enigmatic layer of carbon-rich sediment that was laid down nearly 13 millennia ago. "Clovis artifacts are never found above this black mat," says Allen West, a geophysicist with Geoscience Consulting in Dewey, Ariz. The layer, typically a few millimeters thick, lies between older, underlying strata that are chock-full of mammoth bones and younger, fossilfree sediments immediately above, he notes.
New analyses of samples taken from 26 of those sites reveal several hallmarks of an extraterrestrial object's impact, West and his colleagues reported at the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco, Mexico.
Samples from the base of the black mat yield most of the clues to its extraterrestrial origin, says Richard B. Firestone, West's coworker and a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.)
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Catastrophism & GGG Ping.
You probably owe me an apology over the ‘scolding’ you gave me about the Carolina Bays (absolutely) not having a celestial origin.
Carolina Bays
As the freeze/thaw cycle does its work, some rocks rise, and other rocks fall through the soil. The net result is a circle of rocks of relatively similar size.
It's a least energy cost pathway sort of mathematical form.
No doubt one of the effects of the comet was to encourage the continuation of the glacial period for another thousand years, and that would have given us more circles ~ many of them quite large.
I've heard that the Carolinas got pretty cold in the Younger Dyrass. My own frontyard got pretty cold then, and even before that time. You can go back something like 600 million years to the "snowball earth" thing, and find out that recurring glaciation at the latitude where Virginia was located at that time probably created the 100,000,000 trillion glacial rocks located in the disaggregated schist just below the surface of the clay.
I even have a recurring salt spring on this lot!
Why are the circles elliptical and oriented in a direction? At Prudhoe Bay there are similar looking features shaped by prevailing wind.
Why would a comet suddenly “explode” just before impact?
further, why would a comet choose to “explode” and leave a layer of soot across N America like one would expect with a full eruption of Yellowstone?
just asking, LOL
I'm familiar with that action...however, it does not produce iridium or diamonds.
"In samples taken from 15 of the features, Howard and his colleagues found iridium-rich magnetic grains and carbon spherules with tiny diamond fragments similar to those found at Clovis archaeological sites."
When Yellowstone erupts it leaves a six foot deep ash layer as far away as Nebraska. You know, little things like that. (Ahem)
It exploded for the same reason the Tunguska Event did in 1908.
Causing genetic bottleneck?
Go to this map here and 'scoot'over around the Bahamas...I can make out two possibly more suspicious circles in that area that seem to have some alignment to the Carolina Bays.
We are speaking of the ovals and circles on the coastal plaine, right? With the iridium layer being laid down almost simultaneously with the resumption of the freeze-thaw cycle (on a massive scale), all you’ve done is demonstrate that this was a big comet, not that it ploughed holes in the sand.
Why would a comet suddenly explode just before impact?
Picture an enormous celestial mudball with mixed densities hitting the pressurized atmosphere.
Hmmm, comet debris over Eastern Canada...space microbes evolve into...Quebec?
It exploded for the same reason the Tunguska Event did in 1908.
Incidentally, there is no truth to the persistent rumor that the Tunguska Event was caused by Darwin Central! Besides operative Tesla was working on something else at the time!
Some effect, no doubt.
Professor Bryan Sykes says that the Europeans were driven back to the Ice Age Refuges during the Younger Dryas. Professor Stephan Oppenheimer says that some European populations outside the refuges weathered the YD in place...so, there's some disagreement among experts.
Now, some genetists say that the Sa'ami's (Laplanders) left the refuges early at the end of the Ice Age and were isolated from the larger European population for a long time...I wonder if that isolation wasn't during the YD. The Sa'ami are so unique that they are described as having a Sa'ami Motif.
"It is curious, however, that the mitochondrial DNA of the Samis should differ so distinctly from that of other European peoples. The "Sami motif" which has been identified by researchers - a combination of three specific genetic mutations - is shared by more than one third of all tested Samis, but of all the gene tests conducted throughout the world, the same mutation has occurred in only six other samples, one Finnish and five Karelian."
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