Diamonds offer 'final proof' that a comet wiped out the mammoth
Sure, 2008 was bad. But for Americans it was nowhere near as bad as 11,000BC – according to research published in Science magazine yesterday.
At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant armadillo extinct. Not to forget the American camel and the American lion.
Although this theory first emerged a year ago and has been hotly debated ever since, the authors of the Science article present compelling evidence to support it – in the form of nanodiamonds.
These, which are so small they are barely visible even under the most advanced microscopes, have been found embedded in 13,000-year-old sediment in North America and Europe. The only plausible explanation for this, say the authors, is a planetary catastrophe of the sort that bade farewell to the dinosaurs about 65 million years earlier.
Read entire article at Times (UK)
At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant armadillo extinct. Not to forget the American camel and the American lion.
Although this theory first emerged a year ago and has been hotly debated ever since, the authors of the Science article present compelling evidence to support it – in the form of nanodiamonds.
These, which are so small they are barely visible even under the most advanced microscopes, have been found embedded in 13,000-year-old sediment in North America and Europe. The only plausible explanation for this, say the authors, is a planetary catastrophe of the sort that bade farewell to the dinosaurs about 65 million years earlier.