History of The Hypothesis
The initial description of this hypothesis was published in 2007. Later that year, an additional study revealed that the impact event may have led to an immediate decline in human populations in North America at that time.
Additional data supporting the synchronous nature of the black mat was published. The authors stated that the data required further analysis, and independent analysis of other Clovis sites for verification of this evidence. The authors stated that they remained skeptical of the bolide impact hypothesis as the cause of the Younger Dryas and the megafaunal extinction. They also concluded that "something major happened at 10,900 BP, approximately 2000 years later than the presumptive impact.
Transmission electron microscopy evidence showing nanodiamonds from the geologic moment of the event was published in the journal Science. Also, in the same issue, D.J. Kennett reported that the nano-diamonds were evidence for bolide impacts from a rare swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comets at the start of Younger Dryas, resulting from multiple airbursts and surface impacts. This resulted in substantial loss of plant life, megafauna, and other animals. This study has been strongly disputed by other scientists, which included several accusations of misconduct and past criminal activities of one of the authors.
The conclusions could not be repeated, and further research has suggested that the there were no nanodiamonds found, and the supposed spherules were, in fact, either fungus or insect feces.
Read more about this topic: Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or hypothesis:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)