Free Republic

We report the discovery in Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico of a black, carbon-rich, lacustrine layer, containing nanodiamonds, microspherules, and other unusual materials that date to the early Younger Dryas and are interpreted to result from an extraterrestrial impact. These proxies were found in a 27-m-long core as part of an interdisciplinary effort to extract a paleoclimate record back through the previous interglacial. Our attention focused early on an anomalous, 10-cm-thick, carbon-rich layer at a depth of 2.8 m that dates to 12.9 ka and coincides with a suite of anomalous coeval environmental and biotic changes independently recognized in other...

Jun 2010 - The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, the largest extinction in history, could have been caused by huge, worldwide methane explosions, says Dr. Gregory Ryskin, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University Could such explosions have created the Carolina Bays? (More than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground about 12,000 years ago at the Gothenburg magnetic reversal. Some of the holes - which are still there - are bigger than nearby cities. Those holes are now collectively known as the Carolina Bays.) During the Great Permian Extinction, when up to 95% of all species went extinct, Dr....

Al Goodyear and the Secrets of the Ancient AmericansUSC Professor Discovers 50,000 Year-Old Artifacts in S.C. BY RON AIKEN It was the summer of 1998, and University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear had a problem on his hands. Fourteen years of digging at an ancient chert quarry outside Allendale had begun to bear fruit: At a site called Big Pine Tree, Goodyear was well on his way to establishing that a substantial Clovis population lived here. If you’ll recall your history lessons from high school, the Clovis people — named such because the first evidence of them was found...

A carbon-rich black layer, dating to 12.9 ka, has been previously identified at 50 Clovis-age sites across North America and appears contemporaneous with the abrupt onset of Younger Dryas (YD) cooling. The in situ bones of extinct Pleistocene megafauna, along with Clovis tool assemblages, occur below this black layer but not within or above it. Causes for the extinctions, YD cooling, and termination of Clovis culture have long been controversial. In this paper, we provide evidence for an extraterrestrial (ET) impact event at 12.9 ka, which we hypothesize caused abrupt environmental changes that contributed to YD cooling, major ecological reorganization,...

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...

Is it just a coincidence that more than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground - all at the same time - about 12,000 years ago at a magnetic reversal? Usually not more than 20 feet deep - which means that they were probably not formed by meteoric impacts - the holes range in size from one acre to several thousand acres, and measure up seven miles across. Scientists estimate that there could be more than two million Carolina bays (sometimes under different names) spread across the United States from Florida to New Jersey to Texas. I sure...

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. The morning began with a brief but vigorous argument - call it a discussion - in the hotel lobby. The breakfast table was loaded with road maps, Google Earth printouts and colorful elevation images intended to help the three researchers locate a curious landscape feature. They were hunting for slight depressions in the earth, dimples almost invisible at ground level but so striking from the air that, for a number of years, they captivated the entire country. Scientists in the mid-1900s devoted careers to their study, debated furiously in print, were celebrated, vilified, laughed at and honored,...

June 28, 2007 Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age. University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found in Georgia, North Carolina and...