GeoNotes Cypress Hills and area
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THE YOUNGER DRYAS EVENT
a recent climate disruption and extinction event, and how it may relate to past major and minor extinction events
The Younger Dryas (YD) event is an event not many people will not have heard of, and yet, it is significant in the understanding of what could have caused the environmental disruptions that led to past extinctions on earth. The YD is part of a possible sixth major extinction event currently underway that some believe began 100,000 years ago. It is also a relatively recent event that could give clues not only to possible future environmental disruptions but also to the fate of our global civilization.
The event was first characterized in the 1890s studies of Swedish and Danish bog and lake sites but was not recognized and described until 1904 in Denmark with the discovery of the YD within a shallow freshwater glacial lacustrine clay lakebed deposit. The clays contained macrofossils of Arctic flora and the Arctic flower, Dryas octopetala from where the YD gets its name. Sandwiched between the colder climate Arctic flora and Dryas clay strata is an organic-rich peat layer from a milder climate flora which included birch trees and junipers. It was reasoned that the sharp boundary between colder climate Dryas clay strata and the warmer climate flora is evidence of an abrupt change in climate caused by an unknown event. Since then, the YD has become one of the most studied periods in Quaternary (2.6 Ma to present) science, and the Greenland ice core sequences are the most used palaeoclimate standards of the last deglaciation to further delineate the YD event.
Scientists analyzing Greenland ice core samples found a sudden sharp drop in average temperatures going from minus 41.5 to minus 48.5 C (Fig. 1) beginning at 12,800 and ending at 11,600 years before present (BP). The drop occurred just when the planet was starting to warm up as it was slowly coming out of the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago. This temperature drop was also noticed in the Antarctic ice core stratigraphy. The cold spell that characterizes the YD event lasted 1200 years before the temperature rose sharply bringing the planet out of the ice age ushering in the Holocene Epoch. Puzzled by this and other environmental anomalies before this period scientists started to take a closer look at the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) for proxies that could give clues to the cause of these environmental disruptions. Proxies were found and, surprisingly, some are similar to those found at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary and other extinction boundaries in the geological past.
Figure 1: The Younger Dryas (YD) event. There is also an Older Dryas around 15,000 BP and an Oldest Dryas around 16,500 BP. Image: Graham Hancock, 2015There is now abundant scientific evidence of a major climate disruption near and at the YDB. This disruption is associated with species extinctions including the disappearance of advanced civilizations such as Plato's mysterious Atlantis and some of the more primitive hunter-gatherer indigenous paleocultures. The end of the YD, according to most classical historians, is also the beginning of the drama of our civilization as it unfolded and emerge into what we have today. The records of the human drama include cataclysmic events told in oral stories and petroglyphs by the indigenous people, and documented in ancient and religious texts. It’s almost as if our current civilization is the survivor of that uncanny event that drove us into the stone age from where we have emerged rediscovering through science and other means what we once knew.
The YD event is mainly a northern hemisphere phenomenon that had global consequences. The climate dynamics that produced the sudden temperature drop and abrupt temperature rise are hotly debated in academic circles. Some researchers believe this temperature difference is simply part of the natural deglaciation process and requires no further investigation. Other researchers disagree because of the overwhelming evidence that there was some kind of anomalous disruptive event.
The event involved sudden freezing, sudden thawing, massive meltwater surges, changes in ocean salinity, and directional changes in ocean currents. Extensive climate disruption can be seen in Alaska, Yukon, and across Northern Siberia with numerous mammoth bones buried and exposed in mostly muck heavily loaded with organic debris. Some frozen Siberian mammoths still contained recognizable undigested vegetation in their stomachs while other mammoths were buried standing upright in the frozen debris muck. Surprisingly, not all mammoths disappeared in Northern Russia and the Yukon between the climate instability of 11,000-14,000 BP. Small mammoth populations persisted and became extinct later on Wrangle Island (Russia) 3700 BP and Taimyr (Russia) 3900 BP, St. Paul Island (Alaska), and recent new evidence from DNA-rich permafrost suggests 5000 BP in the Klondike region of central Yukon.
The initial cause of the YD climate disruption in the Northern Hemisphere is the focus of this article with an impact disrupter in mind. There is currently no direct evidence of an impactor site, yet most scientists, who favour this scenario, are leaning towards several large comet/meteorite fragments that impacted the glacial ice around the Hudson’s Bay, the Great Lakes, and other areas in the northern hemisphere inside and outside of Canada. Indirect evidence of impactors including airburst in North America has been discovered and are discussed by Richard Firestone, et al (2006) in their fascinating book “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes”. These findings are briefly outlined below.
1. Clovis indigenous paleoculture of North America (Fig. 2): The ice age Clovis people mainly inhabited the US and Central America with some settlements in Canada. The Clovis culture is distinguished by its characteristic fluted projectiles known as Clovis Points. The culture was relatively short-lived and mostly disappeared before the YDB around 12,800 BP, along with 40 million animals making up at least 37 now-extinct genera of North American ice age land mammals. A black sooty layer of the YDB covers the Clovis tools and the bones of the extinct ice age mammals with no evidence of tools or bones within or above this layer.
Figure 2: Location of paleoindiginous Clovis sites in North America. Glacial extend around the Great Lakes varies with the publications, from cosmictusk.com.Interestingly, when scientists examined the discarded chert flakes from arrowhead making under a microscope they found some flakes had diamond-like micro crater features with raised rims. A few micro craters had a black ball at the bottom consisting of iron and rare earth metals along with elevated uranium and plutonium radiation. This feature was only visible on the exposed surfaces and not the underside. The same is true for the chert source rocks from where the points were made. By measuring the crater’s depth, in microns, researchers found the depths increased towards the Great Lakes indicating the particles came in hot and fast possibly from a massive air burst over the Great Lakes. Such high-velocity particles can only come from a supernova, solar flares, asteroids, or comet air bursts/impacts. Airburst shock waves usually leave no impact scare and are more forceful and destructive than direct impact shock waves with temperatures in access of 4000 C (7200 F) at the flash point.
Along with the magnetic iron particles in the chert flakes, the horns of an extinct bison, and five mammoth tusks, one from Yakutia Province in Siberia and one from Fort Yukon in Alaska had embedded magnetic particles with raised charred rims on the horns and tusks. It is estimated the embedded particles were hot and traveled between 4828-6438 km/hr away from the source.
2. Carbon-14 clock reset: Carbon-14 decay is used to date carbon-based objects with a dating range of 500-50,000 years. This carbon isotope is created when an incoming cosmic ray strikes a nitrogen atom in the atmosphere transforming it into carbon-14. It was once thought carbon-14 was stable until age reversals were observed where younger dates predated older dates. Age reversals were discovered at 13,000 BP around the time of the extinctions. “Something” reset the carbon-14 clocks in some areas and not in others. The most incorrect dates are clustered near the Great Lakes where a large quantity of carbon-14 was added to the atmosphere. This can happen with a supernova, solar flares, a decline in the earth’s magnetic field strength, magnetic reversals, or a thinner atmosphere.
3. The Carolina Bays and Nebraska Rainwater Basins (Fig. 3): The Carolina Bays and the Nebraska Rainwater Basins are large and small unique elliptical shallow lakes and depressions with raised rims. Their longitudinal axis is orientated towards the NW and NE respectively and they appear to have been formed after the Clovis era. The bays and rainwater basins triangulation points towards an impact source at Saginaw Bay, MI a bay in Lake Huron which at the time of the impact was under thick ice. Undated craters have also been found at the bottom of Lake Michigan along with an 805-meter crater at the bottom of Lake Ontario which is believed to be early Holocene in age. Some Carolina Bays triangulate to the Hudson Bay area in the vicinity of two large undated craters within the Hudson Bay. The impact dynamics and ejecta that created the bays and rainwater basins remain debatable, but evidence suggests they are related to the trajectories of impact material flying away from a dust ball or icy comet air bursts/impactors from around the Great Lakes and northern Canada.
Figure 3: Location of Nebraska Rainwater Basins and the Carolina Bays. Possible secondary impacts sites from a large primary cosmic airburst(s)/impact(s) in the Great Lakes area and northern Canada, from cosmictusk.com.4. Drumlin Mystery: Drumlins are longitudinal tapered glacial features that run parallel to each other. Their formation is questionable but generally thought to be formed by either the natural movement of the ice sheet or the result of catastrophic meltwater flooding. Their size, shape, and composition can vary considerably even within the same drumlin field. It’s thought by some researchers that the large Hudson Bay impactor(s) blasted a huge hole into the 3 km thick Laurentide ice sheet and temporarily destabilized the glacier creating an extremely high-pressure meltwater surge that carved depressions at the bottom of the ice sheet creating a mold for the drumlins to form. Each impact would have created its own catastrophic meltwater surge along with more drumlins.
The drumlins are unique to the last glaciation in the northern hemisphere and are not produced today. Major drumlin fields radiate southward and southwestward from the Hudson Bay and Great Lakes area where the impact(s) are thought to have occurred. Many of these drumlins contain magnetic iron particles (magnetite) which is common at the YDB linking them to the YD catastrophic glacial meltwater surges.
5. Thorium: High levels of thorium radiate out in a wide-spreading fan extending somewhat eastward, westward, and southward in a general SW direction and into the US from the Hudson Bay area. This may also be related to the YD cosmic air burst/impact event.
The scientific evidence of a catastrophic event around 13,000 years ago that affected three continents (North America, South America, Europe/Western Asia) is mounting with a recent YDB discovery at Pilauco, southern Chile. No research has been done to determine whether the YDB exists in the Cypress Hills and area. Evidence of YD proxies have been discovered at four Canadian prairie sites (Fig. 4) offering opportunities for more discoveries in the future.
Figure 4: YD research sites, and the extend of the North American ice sheet 12,900 years ago. Lommel is a European research site. Green: high iridium. Brown: no detectable iridium. Inverted triangle: black mats. The numbers represent dates in years before present, from supplementary article to Firestone, et al (2007).The YD evidence simultaneously supports and conflicts with the main theories as to what the environmental disruptors may have been. If we look at some of the stronger evidence another theory that includes all the main theories emerges, a supernova theory proposed by Firestone and others (2006). This stronger evidence includes proxies that are also seen at other extinction boundary sites, such as; Permian-Triassic (P-T, 251 Ma), Cretaceous-Tertiary, or -Paleogene (K-T, or K-Pg, 65Ma), and a minor extinction event at the Eocene-Oligocene (E-O, 34 Ma) boundary. Below is a summary of some of Firestone's geochemical and lithic proxies found within the black carbon-rich sooty layer overlying the Clovis era sites summarized from Firestone’s book.
1. Geochemically, the presence of iridium is evidence of a cosmic impact and is commonly found in asteroids, comets, and cosmic dust particles. Iridium is also found at the K-T boundary. Helium-4 is common on earth, but helium-3 is rare and is found in the 13,000-year-old sediments of the Arabian Sea, the Precambrian Sudbury crater in Canada, and at the P-T boundary which had a 96% extinction rate. Helium-3 is more common in comets than asteroids. Potassium-39 is common, but potassium-40 is rare and is found in the black Clovis sediment, but not before or after. Potassium- 40 is mainly a supernova isotope. Rare earth elements, titanium, thorium, plutonium, and uranium are also higher at the Clovis sites and are common elements found in meteorites, comets, and supernova debris. Likewise, platinum is higher at these sites and was also found in the dust of Greenland ice core samples. The massive addition of carbon-14 came from cosmic rays transforming atmospheric nitrogen into carbon-14. Supernovas and solar activity produce visible light, cosmic rays, neutrinos, and gamma rays. Comets contain large amounts of oxalate, ammonium, nitrate, and sulfur. Greenland ice core samples contain elevated sulfur which could also be attributed to increased volcanism.
2. Massive firestorms produced charcoal, and “grape bunch” soot which is also found at the K-T boundary. It is estimated the YD firestorms destroyed 9% of the earth’s terrestrial biomass. Biomass combustion aerosols in ice-core sequences from Russian, Greenland, and Antarctica yielded ammonium, nitrate, oxalate, acetate, and formate along with increased cosmic dust and CO2.
3. Unusual hollow floating carbon spherules contain magnetite and are radioactive. They have been found at some Carolina Bays linking the bays to the air burst/impact and in YD sediment on the European continent. They have also been found at the K-T and P-T boundaries. YD spherule geochemistry suggests they are mainly terrestrial in composition coming from molten terrestrial impact splatter.
4. Black carbon glass forms at temperatures of 3600 C and has also been found at the E-O boundary. It occurs with the hollow spherules at some YDB localities including one Carolina Bay site. They contain a high percentage of aromatic carbon which is also present in some comets and asteroids. Halley’s comet, for example, is covered in a hydrocarbon-rich outer layer that when impacted could create glassy carbon and carbon spherules.
5. Fullerenes are nanometer-sized carbon cages that look similar to soccer balls. They are associated with the carbon glass and are also found at the K-T and P-T boundaries. Fullerenes are commonly found in meteorites, comets, and supernova cloud debris.
6. Nanodiamonds are 1-5 nanometers in size and occur in the hollow spherules. They are rare on earth, but common in meteorites, comets, and supernova debris. Nanodiamonds are also found at the K-T boundary.
The fullerenes and nanodiamonds form at the star’s core and become part of the debris cloud after the star explodes into a supernova. How the supernova fullerenes and nanodiamonds end up on comets and asteroids is debatable. It’s possible they get dusted when they pass through a supernova debris cloud. Or, after the supernova explosion, the material began to consolidate creating dust ball comets that became part of the debris shock wave traveling at thousands of km/sec through space eventually reaching our solar system.
Again, summarizing Firestone, it's speculated, the most destructive supernova shock waves come from supernovas within 150 light-years away. The waves travel for thousands of years before entering our solar system and arrive in different masses and densities traveling at different speeds. Each wave has the potential of causing a complete or partial extinction event with or without impactors. The planetary disruptiveness of these waves is dependent upon the planet’s position in space at the time of the wave impact, the length of time the planet spends passing through the wave, and the quantity and size of the wave debris. The waves can cause orbital deviations of comets and asteroids in our solar system creating future impacts. The solar system can capture some of these supernova dust ball comets and debris which can also become a future threat to our planet and other planets in our solar system.
The shock waves with very little or no mass arriving from a supernova explosion are the cosmic rays, neutrinos, gamma rays, and visible light and are the first to arrive since they travel at or near the speed of light. They can appear as a bright flash that can be seen for many months before fading away. This initial wave can cause massive weather changes, radiation sickness, mutations, produce various toxic compounds, and destroy the ozone layer allowing even more radiation to enter the earth’s atmosphere. This high energy wave can also produce amazing auroras including various dancing figures and forms in the sky that look similar to some petroglyphs recorded by paleoindiginous cultures. This phenomenon is discussed further in another excellent book by Robert Schoch (2012, revised in 2021) “Forgotten Civilization-The Role of Solar Outbursts In Our Past and Future”. Schoch presents evidence that our sun periodically flares up giving rise to immense geomagnetic storms many times greater than the 1859 Carrington Event when several telegraph stations were severely damaged by fire. Since there are no definitive impact surface signatures related to the YDE, his research leads him to believe that the YDE is caused by periodic intense solar activity producing massive coronal mass ejections (CME). Whether solar or supernova, there are usually no impactors associated with this wave and it is a silent lethal environmental disrupter and destroyer that can cause partial or complete species extinctions. This wave coming from a supernova would have arrived long before the YDE.
Sometime later, slightly more massive shock waves of ions, elements, and nanoparticles arrive producing their own set of catastrophes that include influencing the orbits of comets and asteroids in our solar system. This wave can also be silent and lethal with no impactors. It also arrived well before the YD event.
The last supernova wave to arrive is the most destructive. It consists of pockets of dense debris which include the complete package of nanoparticles and numerous chemical elements riding along with it. This wave may include comets from the debris consolidation of the original supernova explosion and even asteroids it picked up along the way. This wave can cause massive changes to climate and ecosystems, and produce earthquakes and volcanoes. It can also alter the orbits of comets and asteroids in our solar system. It’s a pocket of this last debris wave Firestone and others believe hit the earth coming in from the northern hemisphere creating multiple comet impacts/airbursts 12,800 years ago. This hypothesis does support the theories of a single comet that may have broken up into several pieces before impacting the ice in the northern hemisphere.
Furthermore, massive amounts of supernova debris consumed by the sun can cause it to become extremely active and work with the debris waves to either reinforce the waves’ destructiveness or add to the complexity of the shock wave impact.
It’s believed by most scientists that objects in the Kuiper Belt and the icy objects of the Oort cloud are remnants from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. There are also vague hints in the scientific literature and presentations that some of the material in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud is captured material from nearby 'last supernova waves' and possibly even an over-active sun.
Richard Firestone, et al (2006) mention the Taurids, Perseids, Piscids, and the Orionids meteor stream complex which are visible every year in the fall in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere as the earth passes through their meteor stream twice a year. Scientists using computer modeling traced backward the orbits of comets, asteroids, and meteor showers and surprisingly discovered that they all came from a single massive parent comet, possibly 50-100 km in diameter that entered the inner solar system 20-40,000 years ago. Due to tidal and gravitational effects over time this massive comet began to break apart leaving large chunks of material some greater than a kilometer in diameter. The Taurid meteor complex which consists of 13 meteor substreams is of interest to scientists and its possible connection to the YDE and potential future impacts. It’s believed the Younger Dryas comet and its fragments had an NW to south and east trajectory. This trajectory is similar to the northern Taurid meteor complex.
Comet Encke, a short-period near earth comet, is the largest visible remnant in the Taurid meteor complex at 4.8 km in diameter. It's believed, based on calculations, a much larger 30 km diameter dormant dark comet is lurking within Taurid complex which has the potential of impacting the earth sooner than later creating another but more massive YDE. The fragment that struck the continental ice sheet in northeastern Canada roughly 12,800 years ago is estimated to be 4 km in diameter along with possibly several other large pieces that impacted the ice sheet throughout the northern hemisphere. A more recent meteor related to the Taurids exploded at an altitude of 5-10 km as an air burst before the shock wave impacted the earth is the Tunguska event (Russia, June 30, 1908). This meteor was a 60-190 m diameter object which flattened 2000 square km of forest and shattered windows 100 km away. Another recent air burst, also in Russia, the Chelyabinsk meteor (February 15, 2013) was a 20 m diameter object injuring 1200 people and shattered windows 65 km away. These were small meteors, just imagine the destructive power of a 4 km wide object.
To quote Firestone, et al (2006), who is mentioning research conducted by two other scientists, “When we look at climate and ice-core records, we can see that pattern [a pattern of chemical proxies every 2000 to 4000 years]. For example, the iridium, helium-3, nitrate, ammonium, and other key measurements seem to rise and fall in tandem, producing noticeable peaks around 18,000, 16,000, 13,000, 9,000, 5,000, and 2,000 years ago. In that pattern of peaks every 2,000 to 4,000 years, we may be seeing the “calling cards” of the returning megacomet”. NASA is aware that asteroids and comets are a serious threat; however, since they can’t do anything about it the risks are down-played to keep the public calm and keep them from demanding that NASA act to reduce the impact risks.
There are currently over 200,000 near-earth objects, and over 100 short-period near-earth comets less than 1.3 astronomical units (abbreviated AU, one AU is the distance from the earth to the sun) when they are at their perihelion (nearest to the sun) point. We should also keep in mind the stray comets and asteroids that periodically enter our solar system. What force caused them to become dislodged from their home star system? Was it a supernova explosion? Are these comets and asteroids supernova debris?
To summarize, according to the proponents of the comet/asteroid/supernova impact theory, the start of the YDE, 12,800 years ago, began with the break up of a large comet before entering the earth’s atmosphere. Large fragments from a parent comet, still orbiting the sun today (Comet Encke), impacted with extremely high temperatures into the continental ice sheet in the northern hemisphere with North America as the epicenter. The temperatures are derived from the presence of suessite, nanodiamonds, cosmic impact spherules, metallic materials, and melted glass at the YDB. This event was experienced globally and in particular Europe, Asia and South America. The black mat at the boundary is generally attributed to grass and forest fires covering a minimum of 50 million square km of the earth’s surface. A less accepted theory supported by some researchers is the black mat may be of algal origin. The largest fragment, estimated between 2- 4 km or larger in diameter, impacted the 3 km thick ice in northeastern Canada, and the large less dense parts of the comet exploded in the atmosphere creating powerful extremely hot air bursts. The denser fragments that impacted the ice sheet produced ice-walled craters with little evidence of an impact once the ice melted away. Although crators have been discovered in what is thought to be the impact area that is of Younger Dryas age, the chronology remains questionable. The proponents believe the impact was a rapid meltdown of a large area of the continental ice sheet that resulted in immense catastrophic floods that drained into the Arctic and the North Atlantic Oceans and produced massive flooding south of the ice sheet. This is contrary to the accepted belief that the breakup of large lake ice dams is the cause of the massive flooding evident in the field research and spoken of in legends. It’s certain that flooding from ice dam breakups has happened; however, some areas such as the Channeled Scablands in Washington State, US have erosional features too extensive to be caused by the insufficient flood outbursts from glacial lakes leading the impact proponents to conclude there had to be another water source to produce such catastrophic flooding as seen on the Channeled Scablands.
The impacts and air bursts catastrophe ended an era for indigenous and possibly advanced cultures and wildlife alike, creating catastrophic continental floods, high-temperature shock waves with extreme over-pressures followed by under-pressures creating 100s of km/hr winds, deadly torrential rains, massive tidal waves, and destabilized the continental ice sheet. It suddenly added immense amounts of cold fresh water to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans upsetting the ocean currents and, in the North Atlantic, upsetting the delicate ocean thermohaline circulation, a driving mechanism based on heat, freshwater, and salt, that disrupted the flow of the warmer southern Atlantic ocean currents northward. Gigantic plumes of water vapour from the melted ice were combined with massive amounts of dust and debris comprised of comet, ice, and underlying earth crustal debris along with smoke and soot from the continent-wide wildfires. The water vapour, smoke, and soot likely promoted the growth of continual cloudiness and noctilucent clouds. This led to reduced sunlight and cooling of the earth’s surface caused by solar insolation at the high latitudes leading to increased snow accumulation which created a feedback loop for further cooling. This lasted 1200 years before an abrupt warming period ended the YDE. It also took the ocean thermohaline circulation roughly 1000 years to be restored to its pre-YDE circulation pattern. The beginning and the end of the YDE were sudden within one human generation.
It should be noted the impact theory and evidence for a comet candidate with multiple large impacts in the northern hemisphere is still new. As the research progresses with new information a more complete picture will emerge, hopefully, removing any confusion surrounding the impact theory. It's also possible new theories may emerge.
What ended the YDE is equally as interesting and mysterious as what caused the event. There is very little scientific information to fall back on except for the accelerated and even catastrophic rise in sea level 11,600 years ago. It ended with a sudden rise in temperature (Fig. 1) putting the global warming that ended the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 BP back on track. It’s believed, by some, that another major catastrophic cosmic impact ended the YDE that was even more massive than the event that started the YD. This time the impact(s) went into the oceans sending up massive plumes of water vapour 11,600 years ago creating a greenhouse effect that ended the global cooling that began 1200 years earlier. Whether this was a massive single impactor or several large impacts into the oceans remains unknown. Which oceans were impacted is also unknown. It is also not known whether the impactor(s) was an air burst, a direct hit, or both. One would expect massive destructive tsunamis, but little evidence exists. Indigenous North and South American west coast legends speak of massive flooding with water coming over the mountains suggesting a massive tsunami from the Pacific. Extinctions were common during the YDE and shortly after the event. It is not known whether the impact(s) that ended the YDE contributed to any extinctions.
The YDB is used in paleo archaeology to distinguish between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, and in geology between the Pleistocene and the Holocene epochs. The YDE essentially ushered in a new world, the Holocene epoch, the one we are currently living in.
Natural species extinctions are common with a rate of one extinction every 200 years. This rate is the background extinction level. Individual and cluster extinctions, and cluster deaths of the same species that may eventually disappear are also common and can be seen throughout the geological record over the past 100,000 years. When looking at major extinction events, the compressional effect of the geological record gives the impression of a single event when in reality the event may have been spread out over many tens or hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. In some cases the extinction boundaries are sharp but in other cases, the boundary is very diffuse giving the impression the boundary is a transitional boundary and not a sharp mass extinction boundary.
Below is a chart of major extinctions events in geological history beginning with the oldest:
Supernova debris, comet, and meteorite impacts alone are not a cause of extinctions. It’s the complicated series of disasters that follow the main initial event that leads to species extinctions. These include varying degrees and combinations of the following; volcanism, earthquakes, massive flooding, radiation poisoning and damage, impact blast wave, heat, cold, flying debris, fires, toxic chemicals, toxic algal blooms, heavy metal toxicity, destruction of food supply, event-related climate change, epidemics, ecosystem collapse, any abrupt or slow permanent change, and predators both animal and human hunting surviving species to extinction.
There is mounting evidence that geomagnetic excursions and reversals can also contribute to species extinctions and their evolution. Geomagnetic deviations occur within the earth’s inner core bringing on a change to the field strength of the earth’s magnetosphere allowing harmful UV radiation to enter causing some biota to become extinct or others to evolve when the geomagnetic intensity is at its minimum. A major decline in the earth's geomagnetic field strength occurred around 13,000 BP coinciding with some megafauna extinctions. Investigating the earth’s geomagnetic deviations and their influence on surface life is an interesting debatable field of study and will not be discussed here in any detail.
This article focuses on extraterrestrial impactors as the cause of extinctions and environmental disruptions; however, not all extinctions are related to impactors and can be attributed to terrestrial changes in the environment brought on by a wide range of solar or planetary factors. Species that have a narrow geographical distribution and a low tolerance to environmental change are more likely to disappear than those with a wide geographical range and a higher tolerance to changes in their environment.
Usually after the major or minor extinction events, but not a prerequisite for extinctions is the much less discussed almost mystical, and controversial emergence of an innovative biological explosion of new diverse species that have adapted and are thriving in their new environments.
I did mention Atlantis earlier, and Plato (427-347 BC) popularized its alleged existence and demise. His source for the legendary tail came from a Greek lawmaker Solon who lived around 600 BC and was himself advised by Egyptian priests. The priests, according to their interpretation of the writings, talked of a former advanced civilization (Atlantis) that was swallowed up by the sea in a single day and night 9000 years before Solon's time. Socrates (470-399 BC) and others had similar stories. The political dynamics that lead to the destruction of Atlantis was also brought into vogue by the famous and very successful American clairvoyant, Edger Cayce. He saw the destruction of Atlantis caused by two rival factions one more enlightened than the other as to the use of a certain powerful crystal or firestone that governed much of their technology and possibly spiritual maintenance. The less enlightened or those with 'disintegrated moral values' as Cayce calls them misused the crystal and brought wide-scale destruction to the Atlantian world. Whether the destruction of Atlantis is coincident with the YDE is not known. For the sake of inclusiveness of opinions, there are those who believe Plato’s Atlantis is more fiction than fact, that Edger Cayce was a psychotic, and that there were no major catastrophes 13,000 years ago. I beg to differ.
In the article GeoNotes: Cypress Hills and Area: Ice Age Paleo Americans (SOUTHWESTIAN: ICE AGE PALEO AMERICANS: Southern Saskatchewan and Alberta ), a Clovis (an academic archaeological label) DNA discovery from a rare single find of an individual in Montana showed that today's North, Central, and South American indigenous people are direct descendants of the Clovis culture that bore the brunt of the YDE. Is it possible, then, that the indigenous Americans of today have stories that hearken back to that time period that can give us some idea of the extent of the catastrophe? Graham Hancock in his book “Magicians of The Gods” (2015) seems to think so. The following paragraphs are some North, Central, and South American indigenous legends mentioned in Hancock’s book.
The Ojibwa are an Anishinaabe People living both in Canada and the US. They have the largest population north of the Rio Grande River in the US and are the second largest indigenous group in Canada. According to their legend, they lived near the edge of the ‘Frozen Lands’. Their saga speaks of a ‘Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star’ whose tail spread for many miles. ‘Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail’. Everything on the ground was burnt with nothing left. There were ‘Indian people’ living here before the catastrophe. Their legend also seems to imply that the quality of human consciousness had a direct influence on the comet’s arrival causing the catastrophe to happen. Many people abandoned their spiritual path and as a result, there was something ‘wrong with nature on earth.’ After the comet, the world was different and survival was difficult. There were massive floods and the weather was colder than before. The giant animals were gone.
The Brulé (Sichangu) is one of seven sub-tribes of the Lakota (Dakota) Nation that currently live in North and South Dakota. Some notable Lakota chiefs are Sitting Bull, Black Elk, Red Cloud, and Crazy Horse. ‘In the world before this one’ when ‘people and animals turned evil and forgot their connection to the Creator’ the Creator responded and resolved ‘to destroy the world and start over’. According to their legend, a ‘few good people’ were warned to go to the highest mountain tops. Then came the powerful thunderbolts shaking the earth and setting the forests and prairies on fire. The rocks glowed red hot. There were rains and massive floods. The giant animals and evil people burned and those on the highest mountain tops were saved. All that’s left of the giant animals are their bleached bones in the Dakota badlands. Other Dakota lore mentions the sea and waters infringed on the land leaving nothing dry and all human life destroyed. There is an interesting reference to giant beavers that made huge dams that ‘flooded the country from horizon to horizon.’
The Cowichan Tribes of British Columbia are the single largest First Nations band in British Columbia.. According to their legend, their seers had a troubling dream ‘that the river rose and flooded the place, and we were all destroyed.’ The seers and those who believed in the seers built a huge raft of canoes joined together and supplied it with food. When the rains came, drops were huge and heavy killing babies. The huge raft rose with the water. After some time the waters subsided and the raft came to rest on Cowichan Mountain saving those on board. The land and destruction was indescribable.
The Quileute (also, Quillayute) are a Native American people in western Washington state. According to their saga, great storms blew for many days. There was rain, hail, and then sleet and snow. Hail stones were large killing many people. People were weak and thin with no food. The hail destroyed the edible plants and the rivers were choked with ice making fishing impossible.
The Pima (River People) are a group of Native Americans living in central and southern Arizona, and northwestern Mexico in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Their legend speaks of massive flooding destroying and washing away everything in its path. The earth trembled and there was a great roar of an immense green wall of water.
The Inuit of Alaska speak of an earthquake accompanied by massive flooding that swept over the land so quickly that only a few people managed to escape in canoes or take refuge on the highest mountain.
The Luiseno (Payomkawichum or the People of the West) of California remember a flood that covered mountains and destroyed most of mankind.
The Chickasaw Nation is Native American people of the southeastern US of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and southwestern Kentucky. Their saga is of massive flooding that destroyed the world.
From Central America, Guatemala, the Popol Vuh, an ancient document from the Quiche Maya speaks of flood and ‘much hail, black rain and mist, and indescribable cold.’ ‘It was cloudy and twilight all over the world...The faces of the sun and the moon were covered’.
And, from South America, the Kon Tiki Viracocha legends speak of the earth being inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness as the sun disappeared with the coming of the thick black rains.
These descriptions are common stories of many flood myths among the indigenous Americans and ancient peoples worldwide. A more extensive look into the flood myths, including Noah and the flood, and the Younger Dryas can be found in Graham Hancock’s book “Magicians of The Gods”.
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This graph shows the sudden and even catastrophic rise in sea level, meltwater pulse 1B (MWP-1B) at the end of the Younger Dryas Event 11,600 BP. Image: Wikipedia.com.
Some comets like Halley’s Comet are covered with a hydrocarbon-rich layer. Image by A Owen from Pixabay.
Location
of the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, and the Oort clouds. Image:
Astronomy Magazine
Types
of meteoroids infographic. Image: Royal Ontario Museum/NASA
Detailed Near Earth Objects (NEO’s) infographic. Image: Phys.org
Solar flare and earth comparison. Image: OER Commons
