Comet Theory Collides With Clovis Research, May Explain Disappearance of Ancient People

University of South Carolina(USC News) ^ | June 28, 2007 | Staff

[ForGod'sSake]

Ongoing discussion.....

[ForGod'sSake]

Don't know how much is new, but interesting nonetheless...

GGG???

[DoughtyOne]

Let’s see, this may be true. On the other hand that may be true. Still it’s possible the other could be true. Yes and of course this other different idea could be true. Well yes, but I’m holding out for that fifth possibility myself.

Ah science. At once so scientific and so refreshing. Heh heh heh...

Oh the possibilities...

[ansel12]

“Ongoing discussion.....”

---

I would like to see you people wrap up all this kind of thing within the next few years, I only have one life time and I don’t like all the unanswered questions that I have being unanswered by you science types.

It would be wonderful if you guys could wrap up the major issues soon, say within 15 or twenty years.

Thank you very much.

[spinestein]

It seems that the scientific community is rapidly embracing the idea that random catastrophic events have had a much greater impact on key features of the Earth and its biological systems than previously thought. I think Eugene Schumacher would be pleasantly surprised by this trend, as well as by this specific theory of the comet collision and the extinction of North American mega fauna 13,000 years ago.

[redhead]

Bumping...

[ForGod'sSake]

Ah science.

Yeah well, science is not an exact, er, uh science???

[ForGod'sSake]

It would be wonderful if you guys could wrap up the major issues soon, say within 15 or twenty years.

Maybe we'll get some help from some of the science types on this forum -- I ain't one of 'em ;^)

[ForGod'sSake]

It seems that the scientific community is rapidly embracing the idea that random catastrophic events have had a much greater impact on key features of the Earth and its biological systems than previously thought.

Looks to me like they don't have much choice; the evidence is mounting. Hard for them to stick to their uniformitarianism(?). Must give 'em heartburn, eh?

[Candor7]

Ongoing discussion.....>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Younger- Dryas Event now scheduled for Iran.

[ForGod'sSake]

FWIW, I had gotten a headsup several months ago about the AGU meeting in Mexico(tough duty, eh?) several months ago and have been waiting for something to come out of it. Apparently, they're gonna make a documentary or two out of their findings theories.

[ForGod'sSake]

Younger- Dryas Event now scheduled for Iran.

A nuclear winter???

[ansel12]

“Maybe we’ll get some help from some of the science types on this forum — I ain’t one of ‘em ;^)”

---

Well, you sure have a good eye for the interesting science article.

[ForGod'sSake]

Well, you sure have a good eye for the interesting science article.

I gotta confess, I went looking for one. I was hoping to find some information about the Mexico meeting. Some heavyweights are/were participants, so whatever comes out of that gathering should be interesting and probably newsworthy to boot.

[spinestein]

[Let’s see, this may be true. On the other hand that may be true. Still it’s possible the other could be true. Yes and of course this other different idea could be true. Well yes, but I’m holding out for that fifth possibility myself.]

[I only have one life time and I don’t like all the unanswered questions that I have being unanswered by you science types.] :^)

Thanks to the scientific method, humanity has started to mature intellectually and is beginning to realize that there is nothing simple about the way nature works. The idea that a few simple and easily understood rules (in the Newtonian tradition) are all that is required for events in the universe to happen is a relic of the past.

[ForGod'sSake]

Also of peripheral interest, to me anyway, several of the group were going to try to tie the Carolina Bays’ formations in with a comet near miss or aerial explosion, etc.

[uglybiker]

It would be wonderful if you guys could wrap up the major issues soon, say within 15 or twenty years.

Don't say that! Ya gotta leave somethin' for your kids to discover!

[ForGod'sSake]

About "The Meeting"...

Did a comet hit the Great Lakes region and fragment human populations 12,900 years ago?

Multi-institutional 26-member team of researchers propose a startling new theory: that an extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animal genera across North America almost 13,000 years ago.

Driving the theory is a carbon-rich layer of soil that has been found, but not definitively explained, at some 50 Clovis-age sites in North America that date to the onset of a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas Event. The sites include several on the Channel Island off California where University of Oregon archaeologists Douglas J. Kennett and Jon M. Erlandson have conducted research.

The theory is being discussed publicly, for the first time, today in a news conference at the 2007 Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union being held this week in Acapulco, Mexico. Kennett is among the attendees who will be available to discuss the theory with their peers. The British journal Nature addressed the theory in a news-section story in its May 18 issue.

Before today, members of the team – including Kennett's father, James P. Kennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Richard B. Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – had been quietly introducing the theory to their professional colleagues.

Douglas Kennett, with Erlandson watching, detailed the theory May 19 to a fully packed UO classroom, where students and faculty members from archaeology, art history, anthropology, biology, geology, geography, political science and psychology, pelted Kennett with questions.

The researchers propose that a known reversal in the world's ocean currents and associated rapid global cooling, which some scientists blame for the extinction of multiple species of animals and the end of the Clovis Period, was itself the result of a bigger event. While generally accepted theory says glacial melting from the North American interior caused the shift in currents, the new proposal points to a large extraterrestrial object exploding above or even into the Laurentide Ice Sheet north of the Great Lakes.

"Highest concentrations of extraterrestrial impact materials occur in the Great Lakes area and spread out from there," Kennett said. "It would have had major effects on humans. Immediate effects would have been in the North and East, producing shockwaves, heat, flooding, wildfires, and a reduction and fragmentation of the human population."

The carbon-rich layer contains metallic microspherules, iridium, carbon spherules, fullerenes, charcoal and soot. Some of those ingredients were found worldwide in soils dating to the K-T Boundary of 65 million years ago.

The K-T layer marks the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Tertiary Period, when numerous species were wiped out after a massive asteroid is believed to have struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico.

Missing in the new theory is a crater marking an impact, but researchers argue that a strike above or into the Laurentide ice sheet could have absorbed it since it was less intense than the K-T event.

Kennett said that 35 animal genera went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, with at least 15 clearly being wiped out close to 12,900 years ago. There would have been major ecological shifts, driving Clovis survivors into isolated groups in search of food and warmth. There is evidence, he said, that pockets of Clovis people survived in refugia, especially in the western United States.

"This was a massive continental scale, if not global, event," Kennett said. He and Erlandson say that they are currently evaluating the existing paleoindian archaeological datasets, which Kennett describes as "suggestive of significant population reduction and fragmentation, but additional work is necessary to test the data further." Earlier research efforts need to be re-evaluated using new technologies that can narrow radiocarbon date ranges, and, as funding becomes available, new sites can be located and studied, Erlandson said.

"As we have grown more confident in the theory," Erlandson said, "we've been letting some of it out in informal talks to gage the response to see where we are headed and what the initial objections are, which will help us to maintain our own objectivity."

The interest in pursuing both old and new leads could ignite a major surge of interdisciplinary questioning and attract a new wave of interested students, Kennett and Erlandson said.

Source: University of Oregon

This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com

[Candor7]

A nuclear winter???>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A chill factor is needed for the Iranians, who in all likelihood will drop a nuke on Israel, from Syria.

Then the Faisel will hit the fan. So we need to know how to survive a nuclear winter, the way the Clovis Pointers did but Red Stoner did not. Maybe the Clovis people invented long johns or something......central heating in log homes??

[rdl6989]

Ping. You might find this interesting.