New studies adds support for Younger Dryas impact event

a reply to: punkinworks10

Hi punkinworks.

This is very, very interesting. I haven't read through all of your linked papers yet but the thought occurred to me that this might - maybe - explain bull worship, bull sacrifice, Minoan bull leaping etc throughout cultures. Food for thought, S&F.

B x

An independent University of Arizona team has confirmed the presence of magnetic micro sphereuals




in samples from the black water draw archeology site.

These microscopic particles are the solidified product of high temp melting of the surface of an impactor and or the ejecta from an impact.

Introduction
The cold period known as the Younger Dryas (YD)
climate oscillation occurred between c. 12.9 ka
BP and c. 11.7 ka BP (e.g. Berger 1990; Peteet
1995; Bj¨orck 2007; Lowe et al. 2008). This sudden
climate change is generally thought to result from
an abrupt change of atmospheric and oceanic
circulations (e.g. Teller et al. 2002; McManus
et al. 2004; Brauer et al. 2008). The beginning
of the YD in North America can at times be
stratigraphically marked by the so-called black mat,
a thin dark layer of organic-rich material (e.g.
Firestone et al. 2007; Haynes 2007, 2008; Pigati
et al. 2009, 2012). The black mat, however, is a
general term that includes, in addition to the dark
organic-rich deposits, some marls and diatomites
that are light grey in color (e.g. Ballenger et al.
2011). A lot of attention was lately paid to the
black mat because of a widespread discussion on
the possibility of the extraterrestrial impact shortly
before the onset of the YD climate oscillation
(e.g. Firestone et al. 2007; Haynes et al. 2010;
Pigati et al. 2009, 2012; Andronikov et al. 2011,
2014; Fayek et al. 2012; Kennett et al. 2015).
There are reports about findings of unusual objects
such as carbon spherules, nanodiamonds, glasslike
carbon, melt-glass, as well as enhanced
amounts of platinum group elements in sediments
corresponding to the lower YD boundary (LYDB) in
support of the hypothesis (e.g. Firestone et al. 2007;
Kennett et al. 2009; Mahaney et al. 2010, 2013;
Bunch et al. 2012; Petaev et al. 2013; Wu et al.
© 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 1
DOI:10.1111/geoa.121222013). One such characteristic object reported is
magnetic microspherules (e.g. Firestone et al. 2007;
Israde-Alc´antara et al. 2012; LeCompte et al. 2012;
Wittke et al. 2013).

The paper is very thorough in its examination of the high temp melt products found at the site, so I'll leave most of the text for y'all to read.

Here is the conclusion,

Conclusions
Strongly elevated concentrations of the magnetic
microspherules in a thin sandy layer corresponding
to the LYDB are revealed for the BWD-1
sedimentary sequence. Sharp increase of the
number of microspherules in sediments located
along the LYDB is in agreement with observations
made by Firestone et al. (2007, 2010) and
LeCompte et al. (2012). Because overall close
chemical, mineralogical, and structural similarity
of the BWD-1 hollow microspherules to those
directly related to known meteorite occurrences
and/or meteoritic events, the cosmic origin of the
former seems to be a credible hypothesis. If we
accept such origin of the BWD-1 microspherules,
then ablation of iron or stony meteorites during their
passage through the Earth’s atmosphere seems to be
the most plausible mechanism for their formation.
However, the exact mechanism of the formation
of the magnetic microspherules is not completely
clear. In addition to the formation during ablation
of the meteoritic body in the Earth’s atmosphere
(as in the case of the microspherules studied), they
could be produced during the airburst of such a
body, or could result from the impact of the ET
body. When meteorite influx increases, it results,
in particular, in elevated concentration of the
hollow magnetic microspherules in discrete layers
of terrestrial sediments. The elevated concentration
of microspherules of the BWD-1 type is a
known phenomenon for multiple LYDB locales
across North America (e.g. Firestone et al. 2007;
LeCompte et al. 2012; Pigati et al. 2012; Wittke
et al. 2013). The presence of the high number of
such microspherules in the sediments can serve
as a local stratigraphic marker in identification
of the LYDB there where dark variety of the
black mat is absent. If one applies methods of
microstratigraphy to paleosols of the suggested
(LYDB) age, the strongly elevated concentrations
of magnetic microspherules would mark precisely
the time of around 12.9 ka BP. The data from
the present study along with observations made
on sediments around the LYDB elsewhere suggest
that some unusual event took place just before the
onset of the YD climate oscillation. However, an
understanding of what happened at c. 12.9 ka BP
and how it is related (if at all) to the onset of the
YD climate oscillation requires further search.

IMPLICATIONS FROM CHEMICAL, STRUCTURAL
AND MINERALOGICAL STUDIES OF MAGNETIC
MICROSPHERULES FROM AROUND THE LOWER
YOUNGER DRYAS BOUNDARY (NEW MEXICO, USA)


I wonder if such melt products will eventually turn up at other period sites( they already have at topper, Santa Rosa Island, Gainey and meadowcroft, just to name a few in NA) and will finally be accepted for what they are and represent.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Wow, that's pretty impressive, P. Is there any way at all that they could have come from something other than meteorites?
I hope you're proven right about this theory.

a reply to: beansidhe
Hi B,
The authors used Ti and Ni ratios to determine whether the parent material had a cosmic or terrestrial origin.
A high Ti (titanium)level is indicative of a terrestrial origin and a high Ni(nickel) content shows a extra terrestrial origin.
One of the things discussed in some of the other papers sited by this one, is that some of these melt products have melt temps in excess of any other natural process, volcanoes are not hot enough nor are any sort of forest fires.
The materials were vaporized and then recondensed from that vapor.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Looking good then.
I'll read the paper and try very hard to understand it.
Appreciate you keeping us all up to date.

B x

a reply to: punkinworks10

Great info, I'm glad to see that some of the results are being published. Thanks for the update on this! In a semi related note... was it you who suggested Elaine Dewar's "Bones"? If so, I just got it, showed up in the mail a couple of days ago.

a reply to: peter vlar


Hi Peter,
yes i did recommed it, at the subliminal reccomendation of JohnnyC. It is very good. The section on Brazil, I found particularly interesting

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Marduk
Whats your point Marduk,
That wikki page is one of the last places I would get any info on the subject, its got an editor who has forsaken all science.

One of the most vocal critics of the YDB events C.V. Haynes was an advisor on this paper.

By the way, just for your information, all sites in California have a nearly 600 year hiatus of occupation starting at ~12.9 kya.

No skeletal remains of horse, camel, mammoth, mastodon, dire wolf, American lion, short-faced bear, sloth, tapir, etc:, or Clovis artifacts have ever been found in situ within the YD age black mat,

that is in fact blatantly untrue.

and no post-Clovis Paleoindian artifacts have ever been found in situ stratigraphically below it.

and what bearing does that have on the question.

Both at Blackwater draw and at Topper the black mat has been indentified covering clovis lithics, at topper sampling was done on in situ artifacts, black mat on top and when the artifact was removed from the stratigraphic column no black mat on the underlying surface.
At black water draw the black mat fills in mammoth footprints and covers debitage at the kill site.
At china lake, in the Mojave, clovis reaches California near the end of the hiatus and clovis artifacts are found above the YDB boundry that is well defined on the ancient fluvial lake shore.

The skeptics are cherry picking the data every bit as bad as the stichinites and all their ilk do.
There are dozens papers and hundreds of pages of data that show something extraordinary occurred and continued to occur over the next few millennia.

originally posted by: punkinworks10
The skeptics are cherry picking the data every bit as bad as the stichinites and all their ilk do.

I would caution you not to jump onto the bandwagon just yet, the amount of papers which show the evidence for this is cherry picked and wrong far outweigh the ones that claim its right, that's my point, normally you are quite rational, but on this you appear to have become a fundamentalist...

a reply to: Marduk
I would hardly say I jumped on a band wagon, I've been following this subject for more than 20 years, since I read an excerpt from Clube & Napiers "Cosmic Serpent", which I currently reading in full.
I've read all of the available literature, that I can get my hands on, both pro and con.
I have based my opinions on that body of work, so to call me a "fundamentalist" is down right ludicrous.
Though I respect your depth of knowledge, especially in your areas of expertise, I will have to argue, that since you haven't engaged me in a discussion on why YOU disagree with the theory, it is.you who is showing fundamentalist tendencies.
So, if you wish to have a discussion on the pros and cons of the theory I am always willing to do such

A new paper has been published on the extraordianry fires that swept the northern hemishphere at the onset of the younger dryas.
www.dropbox.com...

The Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) cosmic-impact hypothesis is based on considerable evidence that Earth collided
with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet, the remnants of which persist within the inner solar
system ∼12,800 y later. Evidence suggests that theYDB cosmic impact triggered an “impact winter” and the subsequent
Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural
shifts and population declines. The cosmic impact deposited anomalously high concentrations of platinum over much
of theNorthernHemisphere, as recorded at 26YDB sites at theYDonset, including theGreenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice
core, in which platinum deposition spans ∼21 y (∼12,836–12,815 cal BP). The YD onset also exhibits increased dust
concentrations, synchronous with the onset of a remarkably high peak in ammonium, a biomass-burning aerosol. In
four ice-core sequences fromGreenland, Antarctica, and Russia, similar anomalous peaks in other combustion aerosols
occur, including nitrate, oxalate, acetate, and formate, reflecting one of the largest biomass-burning episodes in more
than 120,000 y. In support of widespread wildfires, the perturbations in CO2 records from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica,
suggest that biomass burning at the YD onset may have consumed ∼10 million km2, or ∼9% of Earth’s terrestrial biomass.
The ice record is consistentwith YDB impact theory that extensive impact-related biomass burning triggered the
abrupt onset of an impact winter, which led, through climatic feedbacks, to the anomalous YD climate episode.

Fantastic stuff

Thanks for the effort in bringing the subject to our attention punkinworks10. It appeals to my logical self and is fascinating like a good mystery novel..
Until we can "know" beyond a shadow of a doubt what has happened in the past it seems clear to me that this theory seems more than plausible, hard to argue against it and not sound feeble on the face of the totality.. I have not the slightest difficulty believing that our existence is every bit as precarious and fraught with peril as our myths and legends and memories and dreams remind us. It's just a race to prove the science as a means of explaining what we posit right? It is an exciting endeavor to pick up the breadcrumbs and put a picture together like a forensic team recreating a death. until you realize it was more or less random and a cosmic whim, and could happen again and we might not even know till it was upon us..
I mean, look at Mans' awareness growing - of the makeup and composition of the universe around us, of its' processes and phenomenon. The more we know the smaller our little corner looks and the smaller we feel..
I admire the race to validate scientific theory, every step leads to bigger things right?
Or does it lead us into a corner where one day the learned will realize just because our theories may seem to explain why or how things work, it is not necessarily the Truth ? Will we be well and truly Gobsmacked to discover we've been terribly imaginative but not very correct ?

Oops started to veer there, sorry.
I want answers too. I want to see. I want to know. I want to see the veil lifted and feel wonder again when I know I am not dreaming. I believe Science often brushes against things it doesn't find palatable, I trust it will explain some of the mysteries regardless by means of its' effort to see the workings of it all, of the All.

I like it when I feel small thinking big thoughts, about big ideas, I feel hopeful that it's all real and I am just too small to see it . That I am maybe just oddly not in the right place over and over like some Douglas Adams character who is always rounding a corner and just missing true weirdness behind him or unconsciously steering around it obliviously.. but still I look..

More new stuff.

It seems impact markers have been found in samples from Antartica, and they date to ~12,900 years ago.

Did the Black-Mat Impact/Airburst Reach the Antarctic? Evidence from New Mountain Near the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valley Mountains

Abstract
Detailed microscopic investigations of horizons in a surface paleosol, part of a pedostratigraphic stack of tills at New Mountain, Antarctica, dated to the middle Miocene climatic optimum event (ca. 15 Ma), suggest not only that the paleoclimate history of the continent can be read from stratigraphic layers within paleosols but also that records of cosmic events may lie embedded in coatings on sand clasts resident in paleosols.

The projected link to the probable black-mat event of 12.8 ka is reinforced by the presence of fresh opaque carbon and other cosmic signatures on grain surfaces that overlie well-weathered grain features, presumably weathering from middle Miocene time near today. Evidence of CO2 and NOx accumulations dated to 12.9 ka in the Taylor Ice Dome suggest that the black-mat impact/airburst of the same time line as the Younger Dryas boundary may have reached across South America and the Pacific Ocean to the Dry Valley Mountains of Antarctica.

The increasing body of hard science is hard to discount.

a reply to: punkinworks10

As much as I've been a holdout on this and for as long as I have, it's getting very difficult to argue away the mounting data supporting the YD Impact hypothesis. Were definitely closing in on that gap separating hypothesis from theory. I'll take a peek through this tomorrow when. I've got a little more time to give it the proper attention.

I've been a little preoccupied keeping up with John Hawks archaic hominid genetic analysis which is in and of itself, rewriting what we thought we knew about Pleistocene hominids from H. Naledi in the extreme South to Denisovan and Neanderthal ties in the north as well as recent data showing that East Asians actually have more Neanderthal Y DNA than Europeans. Sima de Los Huesos has completely changed everything we though we knew. If my youngest was a little older, I would be doing everything I could to involve myself in those studies or at the very least try to sneak a foot in at Max Planck and get my fingers into some of the work Svante Paabo is doing there.

The last 20 years of Paleoanthropology have given us more dats than the first century and a half of Anthropology as a whole. It's a pretty exciting time for dorks like me who get excited about what would make most people fall asleep. In other words... Keep it coming. You've definitely got your finger on the pulse of the YD Impact hypothesis and I'm very interested to see where it eventually leads to.

originally posted by: peter vlar
a reply to: punkinworks10

As much as I've been a holdout on this and for as long as I have, it's getting very difficult to argue away the mounting data supporting the YD Impact hypothesis. Were definitely closing in on that gap separating hypothesis from theory. I'll take a peek through this tomorrow when. I've got a little more time to give it the proper attention.

I've been a little preoccupied keeping up with John Hawks archaic hominid genetic analysis which is in and of itself, rewriting what we thought we knew about Pleistocene hominids from H. Naledi in the extreme South to Denisovan and Neanderthal ties in the north as well as recent data showing that East Asians actually have more Neanderthal Y DNA than Europeans. Sima de Los Huesos has completely changed everything we though we knew. If my youngest was a little older, I would be doing everything I could to involve myself in those studies or at the very least try to sneak a foot in at Max Planck and get my fingers into some of the work Svante Paabo is doing there.

The last 20 years of Paleoanthropology have given us more dats than the first century and a half of Anthropology as a whole. It's a pretty exciting time for dorks like me who get excited about what would make most people fall asleep. In other words... Keep it coming. You've definitely got your finger on the pulse of the YD Impact hypothesis and I'm very interested to see where it eventually leads to.

Good morning Peter,
I too have been absorbed by current work in paleoanthropology, like the newest tidbit that AMH and Denisovans mixed at two different times from northern and southern source populations or how Tianuan people of 50kya? dont have any denisovan ancestry, yet are directly related to people of south america who have some of the highest levels of denisovan ancestry outside of Melanesia. Interstingly enough these same people show cultural ties with Australasia, through music and mythological structures.
The strong presence of HSN Y DNA in east asia does not surprise me at all, I believe it to be a hallmark of large long distance migrations. As the large group moves away from its home territory, as women bear children they spawn new more sedentary groups that will also tend to collect the old and infirm leaving a higher proportion of males to continue on, until the migration reaches a point its mostly male. I belive this mechanism is well illustrated with the proto Indo-european movements from the steppes into western europe. These migrations were almost exclusively male.
I think this is also why you see Y dna profiles so concentrated in the new world, these groups of far flung males tend to be closely related at their terminus.
As far as YDB goes, there has been so much solid work done by widely disparete groups over the last 5-6 years that it is next to impossible to discount all of the results. Frankly I grew wearisome of updating this thread as solid science gets ignored, and un-wanted and un-needed interlopers have glaumed onto the work and damaged its credibility( Hancock and others).
I have read papers from a wide variety of fields that have touched on data that seem to show extraordinary events at that time in earths history. One fantastic paper details what appears to be an episode of repeating periodic catastrophies in the Yukon, dating from ~45kya(barringer crater time frame) to ~20kya( time frame for insertion of Taurid progenitor into inner solar orbit).

a reply to: punkinworks10

I don't see that they've managed to overcome the main criticisms here (that the fires show evidence of being caused by humans, that the extinction patters are not a match (this was one of my initial assessments), etc. In addition, they tend to be speculating as if the entire world was made up of the Americas only and not Eurasia and Australia and Antarctica (no widespread fires there, for instance.)

a reply to: Byrd


You touch on a specific point that I'm still unable to reconcile with the data that could lend credence to the potential YD event... That ecological niche specific organisms did not disappear simultaneously en masse. This aspect alone goes a long way towards falsifying the hypothesis because were it one singular event causing the level of destruction and extinction associated with the YD Impact event, we would see every organism dependent upon specific ecological niches disappearing from the record. Yet this isn't the case.

I've also yet to see anyone provide evidence of any genetic bottlenecks that should be readily apparent. 13 KA isn't very long ago when working with archaic genetic material and degradation is going to be negligible. The biggest hurdle is in the lack of hemisphere wide genomes across multiple species for use in comparison.

For lurkers or people thinking to themselves that Mr. Vlar needs to slow down on his nerd speak and make more sense, the recent update posted yesterday by Punkinworks is utilizing data from Antarctica which alludes to this event at the onset of the Younger Dryas being of such magnitude that it would have eliminated large portions of nearly every organism in North America and South America. This should have had the effect that, for example, would have wiped out every large herbivorous organisms the size of say Mammoths and wooly rhinos down to American Horses and all carnivores from Smilodon (saber tooth tigers) to Short Faced Bears and smaller Dire Wolves. And by smaller I just mean in comparison to other large carnivores as they were about 25-30% larger than any wolves we have today.

But, all of these organisms did not die out as a result of the possible YD Impact event. Horses were still fairly abundant until 11 KA (Roughly 2 KA after the YD began). While a significant percentage of Megafauna did become extinct, it wasn't anywhere near as simultaneous or rapid as is often portrayed. I don't think there's much argument that something occurred prior to the onset of the younger dryas. I'm just far from convinced of the YD Impact/Bolide Hypothesis being the best model or even the only factor contributing to the end of megafauna worldwide much like being killed off by H. Sapiens being the only cause of the disappearance of Neanderthal as a distinct subspecies. I think it's a good starting point but a little closed minded or at least a little too myopically focused and as the event or roots of what precipitated the Younger Dryas is continued to be investigated, we will find that there will be multiple causes of both the changes to climate which eradicated ecological niches and the subsequent loss of most of the worlds megafauna.

Byrd, PeterV,
I am not dodging replying to your concerns regarding the YDB event, I have been buried at work and want to do a thoughtful concise reply.
But while browsing at work today, I ran across this,

ABSTRACT: This study investigates changes in climate, vegetation, wildfire and human activity in
Southwest Asia during the transition to Neolithic agriculture between ca. 16 and ca. 9 ka. In order to
trace the fire history of this region, we use microscopic charcoal from lake sediment sequences, and
present two new records: one from south central Turkey (Akgo¨ l) and the other from the southern Levant
(Hula). These are interpreted primarily as the result of regional-scale fire events, with the exception of a
single large event ca. 13 ka at Akgo¨ l, which phytolith analysis shows was the result of burning of the
local marsh vegetation.

I have mentioned this paper in the past and Rick Firestone dug it up this week.
I read it in an unrelated context, it was cited in a paper about bronze age settlements in syria.
Again an unrelated independant work shows evidence that something happed at ~13kya that involved widpsread burning.

Fire, climate and the origins of agriculture: micro-charcoal records of biomass burning during the last glacial–interglacial transition in Southwest Asia

This paper, aside from the YDB tie in , is fantatstic.

a reply to: punkinworks10

I didn’t think you were dodging any replies. I’m all too cognizant that people have real lives to live outside of the ATS bubble. I think that I’ve read the paper you linked but I’m going to go through the material in a little bit. I keep teetering on this particular hypothesis. I just have difficulty reconciling the inconsistencies as much as I would like to fully embrace it. Because I’m all too aware that I’ve got some confirmation biases here, I try to make sure that every I is dotted and every T is crossed. Thanks for reposting the citation.