Killer impact in the North American Dryas?
Monday May 21, 2007
Now this is fun: On Thursday 24 May at the AGU's big spring meeting in Acapulco, researchers presented evidence of a large cosmic impact over North America 12,900 years ago. That date marks the beginning of the Younger Dryas, an episode of abrupt cooling and extinctions in North America—and the sudden end of the Clovis culture. The evidence runs the gamut of impact phenomena: fullerenes, charcoal, iridium spikes, shocked quartz and more. Ground zero appears to have been around the Great Lakes, and the impactor's geochemistry matches the lunar KREEP terrane. Browse all the abstracts at the AGU meeting program page (I've done the initial search for you here) for a tantalizing glimpse at science fresh from the oven. Presumably this work is headed for formal publication somewhere, but I don't know where yet. Thanks to theheretic at LiveJournal for the alert.
Oh, and for namephreaks, get this: the scientist presiding over this session is Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Rick Firestone.
Comments
These titles are interesting and are likely to be additional proof that the radical climate change predicted by the newspapers for the next century is not likely to occur unless we have a close encounter with an asteroid.
me and my little bro went to tennesse and while we were there we went to the caverns and when we got home we had brought home tons of rocks now were collecting them. its pretty fun and interesting.