[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.....”

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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...

[Candor7]

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

Younger- Dryas Event now scheduled for Iran.

[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

[rdl6989]

Ping. You might find this interesting.

[woofer]

Timeframe puts such an event during the near-extent of the last ice age. I grew up 35 miles east of the Mississippi River. For any one else that has driven up and down the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys, the further north and west you go, the broader the valleys gets. What caused the bluffs to rise 500 feet from the valley floors nine miles apart. Sound like a lot of melt water during a very short period to cause that kind of upheaval. In the Upper River Valleys, the bluffs are a ridge parallel to the rivers, not eroded or cut out from erosion like further south.

[djf]

Here we go. More talk about the comet.

[Red Badger]

ping!....

[blam]

Al Goodyear is a good guy.

Here is an earlier article about the impact event mentioned in this article. Did it exterminate the Clovis folks? Don't know yet...interesting ideas though.

Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did A Comet Blow Up Over Eastern Canada? (More) (Carolina Bays)

I've often wondered if the Barringer Impact 50,000 years ago wiped out these even earlier folks mentioned in the link below.

Calico: A 200,000-year Old Site In The Americas?

[bert]

In life one makes bad decisions from time to time. I was within 20 miles of Clovis New Mexico and consciously made a decision not to go.

The road beckoned and apparently had a stronger pull.

Maybe next time

[gcruse]

“”I saw a tremendous drop-off of Redstone points after Clovis,” said Goodyear. “When you see such a widespread decline or pattern like that, you really have to wonder whether there is a population decline to go with it.”’

Hmmm. Maybe it was their version of gun control. The abo-shaman general said, “We need safer arrows,” so WMDs [Winged, notched, daggerheaded] were outlawed.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks FGS for the, hmm, almost an update topic, but it is pingworthy. :')

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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, Simon Warwick-Smith

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks ForGod'sSake.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[Bender2]

Re: ...a widespread decline of post-Clovis points that suggests a possible widespread decline of humans.

Simple explanation: The Liberal Democrats of the time got in control. Through their policies to halt global cooling, tax the rich and make everyone equal in both health, wealth and living space, the whole civilization collapsed and died out.

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting theory.

[Justa]

Bump

[timer]

The ice man found on the border of austria/italy, now known to be a murder victim. Now this : forensic archeology...