See session proceedings here.
Session 5: Comet Impact as the Cause of the Younger Dryas: Pros and Cons
Chair: Dan Muhs
Allen West
1:00 p.m. Allen West – The Younger Dryas impact controversy: Exploring the competing hypotheses for the deposition of nanodiamonds, magnet c spherules, and other
evidence at 12.9 ka
Todd Surovell
1:30 p.m. Todd Surovell – Magnetic grains and microspherules from…
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495
Rod Chilton, author of the most recent (and perhaps only) comprehensive review of Younger Dryas science, was kind to contribute this fine critique of David Morrison’s recent paper in Skeptical Enquirer. I am reading Rod’s excellent book and look forward to reviewing it soon:
The debate continues as to the cause of the more than 1,000 year-long cold interval known as the Younger Dryas.
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499
Unfortunately, the overcrowded session ran late, and there was no time for discussion or questions. Even when their conclusions were challenged, most of the scientists in the audience chose not to respond. The result was a lost opportunity for real debate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the AGU session received very little press attention. Indeed, following the AGU and GSA meetings, the…
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326
Napier paper: Palaeolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex
When the story books are re-written, the increasing — but uncoordinated — coherence between the Brit Neo-Catastrophists and the American YDB team will make interesting study for students of science history. These two groups have no overlap but the facts are leading them to the same place. Ditto for the Holocene Impact…
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306
Adrian Melott
[See here for a news article from December previewing Melott’s March publication.]
I’m still unpacking these two brand new papers from Adrian Melott and A.E. Carlson comparing the atmospheric signals of the Tunguska Event and the start of the Younger Dryas, but they appear relatively positive from standpoint of the YDB impact hypothesis.
The Melott paper is protected, so…
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273
An international team of scientists representing a number of disciplines locate bizarre materials and ET impact markers in a distinct layer of well-dated sediments from the initiation of the Younger Dryas and publish their findings in a major scientific journal. 2007 Firestone et.al. in PNAS?
Nope. W.C. Mahaney et. al. Geomorphology — March 2010.
In a total surprise to me (and I think…
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1354
Tom Stafford was an expert among experts at the Fall Meeting. I became aware of Tom Stafford when Redefining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of America was published in Science in 2007. He is the Former Director of the Laboratory of AMS Radicarbon Research at University of Colorado. And for more than decade he has been President of Stafford Research Laboratories — the…
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544
There was an interesting paper from Science last week concerning sea-level rise in and around the Younger Dryas. It looks as though there may have been a relatively small — but dramatically fast– rise in Sea-Level just before the YD:
Deglacial Meltwater Pulse 1B and Younger Dryas Sea Levels Revisited with Boreholes at Tahiti, from Edouard Bard, Bruno Hamelin, Doriane…
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