COMET WIPED OUT PREHISTORIC AMERICANS ?

Unexplained extinctions, sudden climate change & mysterious craters all point towards a fiery catalysm from out of the blue.

ISSUE 2592 0F NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE SAYS
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The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from. Citing several lines of evidence, the team suggests that a wayward comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere around 12,900 years ago, fractured into pieces and exploded in giant fireballs. Debris seems to have settled as far afield as Europe....immense wildfires scorched North America in the aftermath, killing large populations of mammals and bringing an abrupt end to the Clovis culture. "The entire continent was on fire," [Jim Kennet, one of the team's three principal investigators] says.

...evidence lies in a narrow 12,900-year-old carbon-rich layer of sediment found at eight well-dated Clovis-era sites and a peppering of sediment cores across North America, as well as one site in Belgium. In this layer the team detected several different types of extraterrestrial debris... [but] ...the key sediment layer lacks both the high nickel and iridium levels characteristic of asteroid impacts.

If the team's impact theory holds up under scrutiny it could help explain three mysterious events that coincided around 12,900 years ago.

At this key time, the climate changed abruptly in the northern hemisphere, suddenly cooling in a period known as the Younger Dryas. In addition, the distinctive Clovis culture seems to have vanished in North America, while at least 35 genera of the continent's mammals went extinct – including mammoths, mastodons, camels, ground sloths and horses.