Cold snap through impact of celestial bodies - THE WORLD

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cold snap through impact of celestial bodies

An asteroid impact could have led to the mass extinction of many species of mammals in North America 13,000 years ago. At the same time he might have favored the development of agriculture.

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An asteroid impact could have led to the mass extinction of many species of mammals in North America 13,000 years ago. At the same time he might have favored the development of agriculture.

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The sudden cold snap around 13,000 years ago, possibly was related to the impact of a celestial body. The close U.S. geoscientists from analyzes of rock samples from North America and Europe. Accordingly, the impact of one or more asteroids or comets in North America could have initiated the Younger Dryas.

The following mass extinction of large mammals have changed the lifestyle of people, and possibly even favoring the development of agriculture, the researchers write in the “Proceedings” of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (“PNAS”).

With the younger Dryas, which began about 13,000 years ago, the Earth’s climate cooled sharply, from hitherto unexplained. Some researchers assume that the time broke ice dam on the North American ice sheet. In this Hudson Bay event is therefore poured huge amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic. They stopped by the south coming warm ocean currents and let the air be cooler and drier.

The researchers led by geochemist Mukul Sharma from Dartmouth College in Hanover in the U.S. state of New Hampshire examined layers of rock beads mainly from the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These contain minerals that form only at temperatures above 2000 degrees Celsius. As age and texture, the researchers infer that they originated from an impact about 12,900 years ago.

The rock fit to rocks from the southern province of Quebec, where at that time a celestial body could be impacted. “For the first time, we narrowed the region where an impact of the Younger Dryas is done, even though we have the crater is not found,” Sharma says, according to an announcement of his college. Perhaps there had been several such events.

The following extinction of large mammals had for the evolution of crucial consequences, believes Sharma. Thus, people could no longer so easily engage in hunting and gathering reinforced berries and roots. Perhaps the environmental changes have also meant that the people were settled in Asia Minor at that time and practiced agriculture.

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