If
you get a bunch of archaeologists, geologists, biologists and anthropologists
in a room, you can be sure that it will be one boring party. If you want to
get them charged up, like
Chris
Dodd on O’Reilly Show, all you need is ask the question: How did Mammoths
become extinct in North America?
Around 10,000 years back something happened in North America which
caused the extinction of the mammoth, mastodon, horses, camels,
American lions, cheetahs, saber tooth cats and giant bears all of which
roamed around the grasslands from Alaska to Central America.
The
theories for the extinction of the mammoths and mastodon include a)
hunting by the
Clovis
people b) rapid change in vegetation due to climate change and c) killer
viruses. Now a new theory states that the cause is a supernova explosion
which
happened 41,000 years ago.
According to this theory, debris from the supernova fused to form comet like
objects and one such comet may have hit North America, triggering a
cataclysmic event that killed off the vast majority of mammoths and many
other large North American mammals. It was not just the animals that were
affected, for even human activity seems to have ceased around that time.
According to the new theory, 7000 years after the supernova blasts, an
intense blast of iron-rich grains that hit earth and evidence of that has
been found in 34,000 year old mammoth tusks. Then 10,000 years before
present, a 10 KM wide comet hit North America. Analysis of the particles
found at Clovis sites have revealed that their composition is similar to
lunar rocks and other lunar meteorites that fell on earth.
