Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times by Richard B. Firestone & William Topping The Paleoindian occupation of North America, theoretically the point of entry of the first people to the Americas, is traditionally assumed to have occurred within a short time span beginning at about 12,000 yr B.P. This is inconsistent with much older South American dates of around 32,000 yr B.P.1 and the similarity of the Paleoindian toolkit to Mousterian traditions that disappeared about 30,000 years ago.2. A pattern of unusually young radiocarbon dates in the Northeast has been noted by Bonnichsen and Will.3,4 Our research...