Published June 4, 2025 — by George Howard
A stunning new scientific paper published today in Airbursts and Cratering Impacts provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for a Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) impact structure—this time in Louisiana.
The study, titled “Evidence of a 12,800-year-old Shallow Airburst Depression in Louisiana with Large Deposits of Shocked Quartz and Melted Materials”, is a tour de force by 25 authors, including well-known names in the field such as James Kennett, Allen West, Christopher Moore, Malcolm LeCompte, and Marc Young—both of whom will be presenting this groundbreaking research live at Cosmic Summit 2025.
The paper reports the discovery of an anomalous 300-meter-long depression east of Perkins, Louisiana, filled with high concentrations of impact proxies: shocked quartz, meltglass, microspherules, carbon spherules, and metallic flakes. Most remarkably, the authors argue the site represents a shallow “touch-down” airburst crater—potentially North America’s first documented YDB-age impact feature.
🔬 What They Found
- Shocked Quartz: Glass-filled planar fractures and deformation features—classic cosmic impact indicators.
- Hundreds of Billions of Microspherules: Found in situ within sediments dating to ~12,800 years BP.
- Over a Ton of Meltglass: Formed at temperatures exceeding 2200°C; includes melted zircon, kaolinite, and quartz.
- Carbon-Rich Spherules: Enriched in iridium, platinum, and osmium—elements associated with cosmic bodies.
- Oxygen-Depleted Metallic Flakes: Rare forms of native iron and wüstite common in extraterrestrial materials.
Dating methods included both radiocarbon and argon-argon analyses, pinpointing the event to the Younger Dryas Boundary: 12,835–12,735 cal BP.
💥 A Smoking Gun in the Bayou?
Using hydrocode modeling and detailed geophysical surveys, the authors propose that the depression—once thought to be a natural lake—is in fact a small crater formed by a low-altitude airburst, akin to the Tunguska event of 1908.
The site exhibits a steep-sided, rimmed basin structure with spherules most concentrated in the center—hallmarks of impact ejecta fallback. Magnetic anomalies extending from the depression resemble patterns seen in known impact sites on Earth, the Moon, and Mars.
🚫 Not Industrial. Not Volcanic. Not from Logging.
Alternative explanations were rigorously ruled out:
- No industrial slag or fly ash: The chemical signatures are distinct from anthropogenic sources.
- No historical manufacturing: The region has no industrial history that could account for the materials.
- No volcanic or tectonic activity: Temperatures required to melt zircon, boil quartz, and shock grains exceed natural Earth processes outside of cosmic impacts.
📍 Why This Matters
This may be the first physical crater associated with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis—a controversial theory proposing that a fragmented comet struck Earth 12,800 years ago, triggering abrupt cooling, extinction of megafauna, and collapse of early human cultures.
Until now, researchers have identified impact proxies at over 50 sites across four continents—but no clear crater. That may have just changed with this discovery in the Louisiana bayou.
🔍 The study includes 47 pages of SEM imagery, radiometric dating, chemical analyses, and crater modeling. This is one for the books.
And if you want to hear more—from the authors themselves— Dr. Malcolm LeCompte and Marc D. Young will be presenting their findings and answering questions at Cosmic Summit 2025 in Greensboro, NC, June 20–23.
Don’t miss this historic moment in catastrophist science.
Get your pass. Pack your notes. And get ready to rethink everything.