The cause of a thousand-year cold period that killed off giant ground sloths, mastodons, and sabretooth cats continues to be in contention. While it's long been hypothesized that the major climate shift that occurred around 12,900 years ago was the result of a sudden flood of freshwater into the Atlantic, new research is trying to shift the cause to a comet or asteroid that it suggests crashed down in Quebec.
An impact site is yet to be found, but the Dartmouth College team behind the research says that it's identified fragments of solidified molten rock that seem to have been thrown all the way from Quebec to Pennsylvania and New Jersey because of such an explosion. The rocks appear to have been deposited at the dawn of the period of...
via The Verge - All Posts http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/3/4690854/quebec-asteroid-comet-crash-theory-prehistoric-climate-change
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