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New evidence supports giant asteroid impact 12 800 years ago

A research team from South Africa has discovered new evidence that suggests Earth was struck by an asteroid or meteorite 12 800 years ago. The event resulted in global consequences and the extinction of many species at the period of an episode called Younger Dryas. The study was published on October 2, 2019.

[...] Thackeray, along with researcher Philip Pieterse from the University of Johannesburg and Professor Louis Scott of the University of the Free State, found the evidence from a core drilled in a peat deposit, remarkably in a sample approximately 12 800 years old.

"Our finding at least partially supports the highly controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH). We seriously need to explore the view that an asteroid impact somewhere on earth may have caused climate change on a global scale, and contributed to some extent to the process of extinction of large animals at the end of the Pleistocene, after the last ice age," Thackeray stated, noting that meteorites are abundant in platinum.

"Without necessarily arguing for a single causal factor on a global scale, we cautiously hint at the possibility that these technological changes, in North America and on the African subcontinent at about the same time, might have been associated indirectly with an asteroid impact with major global consequences," said Thackeray. "We cannot be certain, but a cosmic impact could have affected humans as a result of local changes in the environment and the availability of food resources, associated with sudden climate change."

The team gathered evidence from a pollen at Wonderkrater to show that around 12 800 years ago, a temporary cooling occurred, which is linked to the Younger Dryas temperature drop. Some scientists said this cooling in widespread sites could at least have been potentially associated with the worldwide dispersal of atmospheric dust that is rich in platinum. Furthermore, a large crater has also been found in northern Greenland beneath the Hiawatha Glacier.

"There is some evidence to support the view that it might possibly have been the very place where a large meteorite struck the planet earth 12 800 years ago," Thackeray explained. "If this was indeed the case, there must have been global consequences."

Reference:

"The Younger Dryas interval at Wonderkrater (South Africa) in the context of a platinum anomaly" - Thackeray, J.F. et al. - Palaeontologia Africana - DOI: https://hdl.handle.net/10539/28129

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