Discover

The 'Younger Dryas impact event' is the name of a hypothesized impact event at the beginning of the Younger Dryas cold spell about 10,900 BCE. The impact seems to have occurred near the North American Great Lakes; the bolide may have disintegrated in the air.

Contents

Evidence

2007 AGU Meeting

See also

References

Evidence

The evidence for such an impact event is a layer of unusual materials (Nanodiamonds, magnetic grains, carbon spherules, magnetic spherules, charcoal, soot, fullerenes enriched in Helium 3, etc.) at the very bottom of the "black mat" of organic material that marks the beginning of the Younger Dryas. ^[1]
It is hypothesized that this impact event brought about the extinction of many North American large mammals. These animals included camels, mammoths, the short-faced bear and numerous other species. The markers for the impact event also appear at the end of the Clovis culture.

2007 AGU Meeting

On May 24, 2007, a session at the spring 2007 joint assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco, Mexico was held to discuss this hypothesis and reveal the evidence. Session Information, 2007 Joint Assembly, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology Includes links to abstracts.

See also

Video of the AGU Press Conference announcing the discovery

★ Pleistocene megafauna

★ Holocene extinction event

References

1. Archaeology: Blast in the past?, , Rex, Dalton, Nature, News article in ''Nature''