From the University of California – Santa Barbara: A cataclysmic event of a certain age
Geologist James Kennett and an international team narrow the date of an anomalous cooling event most likely triggered by a cosmic impact
This map shows the Younger Dryas Boundary locations that provided data for the analysis. Credit: UCSB
At the end of the Pleistocene period, approximately 12,800 years ago — give or take a few centuries — a cosmic impact triggered an abrupt cooling episode that earth scientists refer to as the Younger Dryas.
New research by UC Santa Barbara geologist James Kennett and an international group of investigators has narrowed the date to a 100-year range, sometime between 12,835 and 12,735 years ago. The team’s findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers used Bayesian statistical analyses of 354 dates taken from 30 sites on more than four continents. By using Bayesian analysis, the researchers were able to calculate more robust age models through multiple, progressive statistical iterations that consider all related age data.
“This range overlaps with that of a platinum peak recorded in the Greenland ice sheet and of the onset of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six independent key records,” explained Kennett, professor emeritus in UCSB’s Department of Earth Science. “This suggests a causal connection between the impact event and the Younger Dryas cooling.”
In a previous paper, Kennett and colleagues conclusively identified a thin layer called the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) that contains a rich assemblage of high-temperature spherules, melt-glass and nanodiamonds, the production of which can be explained only by cosmic impact. However, in order for the major impact theory to be possible, the YDB layer would have to be the same age globally, which is what this latest paper reports.
“We tested this to determine if the dates for the layer in all of these sites are in the same window and statistically whether they come from the same event,” Kennett said. “Our analysis shows with 95 percent probability that the dates are consistent with a single cosmic impact event.”
All together, the locations cover a huge range of distribution, reaching from northern Syria to California and from Venezuela to Canada. Two California sites are on the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara.
However, Kennett and his team didn’t rely solely on their own data, which mostly used radiocarbon dating to determine date ranges for each site. They also examined six instances of independently derived age data that used other dating methods, in most cases counting annual layers in ice and lake sediments.
Two core studies taken from the Greenland ice sheet revealed an anomalous platinum layer, a marker for the YDB. A study of tree rings in Germany also showed evidence of the YDB, as did freshwater and marine varves, the annual laminations that occur in bodies of water. Even stalagmites in China displayed signs of abrupt climate change around the time of the Younger Dryas cooling event.
“The important takeaway is that these proxy records suggest a causal connection between the YDB cosmic impact event and the Younger Dryas cooling event,” Kennett said. “In other words, the impact event triggered this abrupt cooling.
“The chronology is very important because there’s been a long history of trying to figure out what caused this anomalous and enigmatic cooling,” he added. “We suggest that this paper goes a long way to answering that question and hope that this study will inspire others to use Bayesian statistical analysis in similar kinds of studies because it’s such a powerful tool.”
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Could be some old Roman style wall with fortifications spaced out and fire signal towers.
Rome built a couple of walls with fortifications in or near the Sahara. One is appx. 1300 Km long. Called Limes. Perhaps the photo is part of that wall. Sometimes the forts or towers were spaced up to 1 mile apart. Other times less.
The 2nd link is to a overhead photo of a Roman wall in Romania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_Tripolitanus
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_288725_en.html
Dahlquist, thanks, interesting information.
It is an image I captured from the ‘Google Earth’, the structure at first instance is perhaps reminiscent of Great Wall of China, but dimensions are far, far greater, which makes me think that it must be natural feature, but I am puzzled how it could occur naturally. I still hope a geologist may come up with some insight.
A study about the extinction of Mammoths. Robust assumptions.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/07/24/4279385.htm?site=science&topic=latest
… there’s been a long history of trying to figure out what caused this anomalous and enigmatic cooling
Dear Dr Kennet
Looking at the well known temperature history of Greenland over the last glacial (below) can you please tell us what is in the tiniest bit anomalous or enigmatic about the YD and dozens of almost identical micro-interglacials taking place throughout the last Wisconsin glaciation?
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/tidescurrents/media/effect_influences_3.gif
What should be anomalous and enigmatic is a salaried climate scientist so utterly ignorant of basic geology and palaeoclimate history. But sadly it’s all too common.
I agree wholeheartedly with you Phil…! Please recall during glaciation only parts of this globe were habitable by homo sapien sapiens, (modern humans). They lived purely by hunting and gathering. Neanderthals did not fish but modern humans coming up from North Africa did. There wasn’t much rain but surface water didn’t evaporate as much as it does now. So several years of drought would have created a big water shortage for humans and mega fauna. Elephants in Kenya (written by our mate Tim Flannery)died out not because of water shortage, but they ate themselves out because they could not walk long distances from their only water source. He compared it to his hypothesis about the extinction of mega fauna. So climate would have had a great effect on the survival of all animals. In Australia it was the browsers not the grazers that died out. (Leaf eaters not grass eaters)
Then he changed his tune and said humans caused it. Only one skeleton of one of the Australian mega fauna has been found with a small spear head in it. A dieing animal would make easy prey. Or stuck in the mud. But no evidence of it being eaten or flesh taken from it. (Although that doesn’t mean they weren’t eaten just no evidence of it on the bones) But there were others around the same old water hole that had died too.
And we all know or should know that abrupt climate change causes water shortages and plant life changes (particularly trees) that would affect animals and humans to a marked degree. Climate change (including seasons and two hemispheres) is caused by our orbit around the sun and its position in the solar system as we travel through space. Is that too simplistic? I don’t think so and decent scientist would understand that.
Indeed, climate change was occurring with extreme amplitude around that time. With the current ongoing glacial period there is a tendency toward both deeper glaciations – the last glacial maximum (LGM) being the deepest so far – and warmer interglacials. So the upturn from the LGM 20kya to the Bolling Allerod (warm peak before YD) was an unprecedented warming. Then a “rapid” reversal to cooling in the YD. not surprising that all of that should have stressed megafauna. I don’t rule out however a possible role for humans who were spreading and developing technologically at the time.
Exactly the YD was just one of many events which featured abrupt climate change.
Dude, why do you not even look up someone before you go calling them a climate scientist?
James P. Kennett is a geologist. And he’s been doing it for 50 years this year. So, your ad hominem attacks on his not knowing anything about geology is really nasty and totally uncalled for.
Shame on yourself.
Steve
How many Universities offer degree majors in climate science? Almost none. “Climate scientists” are physicists, oceanographers, cartoonists, rail engineers, ecologists, who make statements about climate. By doing so they become self-appointed climate scientists – like James Kennet when he argues that a comet changed the climate 12 k years ago.
Oh just to expand on Tim Flannery’s report, I studied it at UNE as one explanation of mega fauna extinction or evolutionary adaptation of modern day animals and humans. Climate change was the biggest factor and North American Indians were thought not to settle or no evidence of it until the end of last glacial period around 12,000 years ago. They are thought to have come from and over the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska I suspect. Bering Straits? I can’t remember. This was in 1987/1988 university years, so more evidence may have come up since then. Anyway, good talk.
Lots of evidence has been found in the past 30 years or so to change that picture dramatically. It now appears that there were humans in the Americas before 12 Ka and that they may well have come by sea rather than land.
The most likely route is coastwise from Asia east and south along the Pacific shore down to Chile, but also across the North Atlantic cannot be rules out and has some support. During the LGM, the North Atlantic resembled today’s Arctic, freezing over in winter. This, combined with lower sea level, could have enabled Europeans to reach the exposed Grand Banks of Newfoundland in skin boats.
Yes, the breaking down of the Clovis Barrier (look it up, Bushbunny) has made all of this a wide open field now. Sturgis Hooper, good info here for her.
Some time ago I read an article which said that prior to ~12kya there was a race of people related to Australian aborigines, throughout north and south America. This article then proposed that the opening of the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska around the Holocene inception allowed the migration to North America of much more aggressive hunter-gatherers who displaced these pre-existing humans from North and most of South America. In Tierra del Fuego there is an ancient race of people similar to the Australian aborigines who, according to this theory, are the last descendants of a people once spread throughout both Americas.
Furthermore I read elsewhere that (a) megafauna in North America were wiped out by sudden exposure to humans of which they had no prior experience, but (b) in Africa megafauna persisted since they had learned to survive in the presence of evolving humans.
Is these ideas still credible in the current research community?
The Earth’s surface being about 70% water, we should expect that most extra-terrestrial objects impacting our planet will plunge into the sea. The example of Shoemaker-Levy 9 demonstrates that some impactors may arrive in train, so there is the further possibility that anything like that striking Earth might hit both sea and land, and even sea again, i.e. Pacific, N. America, Atlantic…
But just for the sake of argument, let us set aside for the moment the question of comets, asteroids and such impacting our planet, and allow ourselves the freedom to speculate about what other mechanisms could account for the seemingly wild fluctuations seen, at least on Greenland, (eg. in Phlogiston’s graph) between c75000 years ago and the end of the YD, after which Greenland’s climate seems to have been relatively stable, the Viking experiences there notwithstanding.
I suggest there are at least four possibilities:
1) Changes in solar output
2) Changes in Earth’s orbit
3) Changes in Earth’s axis of rotation
4) Changes in length of the day (speed of earth’s rotation)
In this vein, and as has been mentioned above, we should note, and pay particular attention to ancient astronomical observatories such as the well-known Stonehenge, as well as Dartmoor, Arkaim in Russia, and many, many others around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeoastronomical_sites_by_country
Finally, I return for a moment to the question of the buried/frozen mammoths. Doesn’t anyone else find it curious that the presumed (by some) agent of the mammoth’s demise (human hunters) had completely forgotten about the mammoth hunts, and instead mistakenly identified the buried beasts as subterranean mole rats, giant burrowing mice who perished upon exposure to sunlight, and other such ignorant nonsense?
I don’t find it the least bit surprising that people forgot about hunting mammoths after ten thousand years. A few hundred years at most should do it.
The fluctuations shown in the graph of the past 100,000 years are no different from those of the past almost three million years, ie the Pleistocene. Every glacial phase has many such ups and downs at fairly regular intervals. The proximate cause is ice sheet dynamics.
Heinrich Events are periodic discharges of armadas of icebergs into the North Atlantic, which produce a fresh water layer on the salt water, affecting circulation. The YD is simply HE0 of the last glaciation (they’re numbered backwards in time). This has been well understood since shortly after HEs were discovered in Atlantic sediments, by Hartmut Heinrich.
The YD impact conjecture is a flight of pure fantasy, without a single shred of supporting evidence.
“The fluctuations shown in the graph of the past 100,000 years are no different from those of the past almost three million years”
I take it then that you entirely dismiss the idea that any impactors would have any effects on Earth’s climate over the last 3 million years. Or are you arguing that there have been no impacts at all in that time frame?
Why on earth would I argue that there have been no impacts in the past 100,000 years? Obviously there have been.
Have there been any with climatic effects, ie measurably changing the average of 30 years of weather? I would say that there is no evidence to that effect.
Steve Garcia has mentioned academic papers. Had he spent time in academia, he’d know that the easiest way to publish to avoid perishing is to stake out a position, however unsupportable, then keep advocating it. You will get published because the journal editors know that other so-called scholars will write papers savaging you, but it won’t matter. That’s how it works. You can keep publishing at ease by answering critics and reanalyzing your original data (again so-called) in response. It beats actually going out and making new contributions
That’s what Kennett and crew are all about. It’s common. There is a lady who has made a career of attacking the K-T impact hypothesis, for instance.
Hansen is a good example. He was scooped on his doctoral thesis about Venus, so hatched a hare-brained alternative that led to his lucrative career as a climate alarmist.
Too bad for the other Steve that he has been unwarily and credulously sucked into this vortex.
“Subterranean mole rats” with tusks? Spreading more of that Bun zoo gan rom from zapatopi (“serving the paranoid since 1997”).net again, eh Steve P?
Tien shu! (Gesundheit!).
It’s nothing to sneeze at, verdeviewer, sometimes one must look under rocks. If you have something to say about the substance of my comment, please step up and do so. Otherwise, an attack on source is but child’s play, not far removed from name-calling and other ad hom-type fallacies.
Each issue must be judged on its own merits, and not by where it appears, or by whom it was said.
The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History
By Claudine Cohen
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=9780226112923
ttps://books.google.com/books?id=Il2rrmAySq0C&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=buried+mammoths+thought+to+be+subterranean+creatures&source=bl&ots=TRUiRCC7Ez&sig=KVBf0389Ivavs0vvPtcJx0k6zSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDEQ6AEwA2oVChMIhcK016mBxwIVjFyICh1bFgYJ#v=onepage&q=buried mammoths thought to be subterranean creatures&f=false
http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/2011/03/tabberts-sea-mammoth.html
A couple years back, I had posted here on WUWT similar material about the native Siberians beliefs wrt the mammoth remains, but I can’t find that now. ‘Still looking.
(my bold throughout)
erratum:
Please add an ‘h’ to the beginning of that long, ugly link, and note the navigation at the top. The material I transcribed & quoted appears on pg. 61.
Steve P., I took time to look for confirmation of your previous references regarding giant subterranean rats with elephantiasis and overgrown canines. I confirmed that (1) Tien Shu is a common Chinese name that is given different meanings in different fictional histories, and (2) you shouldn’t expect historical accuracy from Mad Magazine.
As for looking under rocks, I live in an area so full of rocks that the only thing you find under rocks is more rocks.
OMG, look! Woolly mammoths DID NOT DIE OUT!
Sturgis Hooper July 29, 2015 at 4:35 pm –
. . .continuing the Ad Hominem attacks with nothing behind any of it, except invective
I will answer that one Steve. Probably some abrupt climatic events were caused by impacts maybe as high as 10% but that still leaves at least 90% of all abrupt climatic changes which were not caused by impacts.
Steve Garcia July 29, 2015 at 1:05 am
There has been issues with sea level data.
“The resolution of the few sea-level records covering the critical time interval between 14,000 and 9,000 calendar years before the present is still insufficient to draw conclusions about sea-level changes associated with the Younger Dryas cold event and the meltwater pulse 1B (MWP-1B).”
“The new Tahiti sea-level record shows that the sea-level rise slowed down during the Younger Dryas before accelerating again during the Holocene.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1235.short
Steve Garcia July 29, 2015 at 12:43 am
Other cooling events more significant than the YD, have also believed to have occurred very rapidly with some only a few years. The changes to the North Atlantic ocean were huge and nobody could explain these with just a space impact. The North Atlantic ocean had plant life originating from polar and sub-polar regions. The biggest volcanic eruptions in recent decades only affected global temperatures very slightly and only lasted 2/3 years. This paper is now old, but gives a very good view of the YD event.
http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/paleoseminar/pdf/broecker88.pdf
Anthony – A correction needed in your article.
You wrote, “The researchers used Bayesian statistical analyses of 354 dates taken from 30 sites on more than four continents.”
I just got a copy of the paper, and there is nowhere that it says “more than four continents”.
It says “on four continents” 3 times.
It says “across four continents” 4 times.
It says “over four continents” 1 time – as in “spread over four continents.
It never says “more than four continents”.
Can you please correct this, if you notice this comment?
The pertinent part of the abstract reads, “Bayesian chronological modeling was applied to 354 dates from 23 stratigraphic sections in 12 countries on four continents”.
A map caption states and shows 32 sites.
Accounts of old/ancient Chinese beliefs about the mammoths, which you disparage and mock, in fact came from an article by H.H. Howorth in The Geological Magazine from 1880,which were merely quoted by Lyle Zapato, so there’s nothing Mad about it:
https://books.google.com/books?id=6N5kAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA411#v=onepage&q&f=false
You further chose to ignore the two additional references I provided. It’s your choice, but it does not speak well for your interest in getting at the truth.
As for the rocks, my suggestion is ‘keep digging.’
In response to:
verdeviewer
July 29, 2015 at 8:08 pm
Steve P, if you cannot point me to a copy of the Bun zoo gan rom then I’ll assume you’re not interested in truth. As for your John Mckay reference, he describes what you seem to consider very important as “hearsay” and “tall tales.” It may be that some of the descriptions conflate mammoths, rhinos, and giant ground sloths, and suffer from misinterpretation.
McKay has a fascinating and apparently well-researched article about the Adams mammoth:
http://johnmckay.blogspot.com/2009/11/first-great-mammoth.html
Did you read that one?
No mention of the Evenki considering the carcass aquatic, and it was clearly not deposited by the Arctic Ocean. 36,000 years ago there would not have been a Bykovsky Peninsula. The Lena would’ve been much lower and the coastline would have been far to the north.
The melting and erosion of the permafrost that is of much concern recently was obviously occurring back in 1799.
And by the way, verdeviewer, what are you trying to prove? That mammoths are not found in the muck, or that native people did not have peculiar beliefs about them? Your comments here make no sense to me.
Steve P –
No idea who you are saying is disparaging you. Me? I don’t think it was me…
I ran across H H Howorth this past year, and even was able to download one of his books.
Wiki lists three of his geology books – The Mammoth and the Flood (1887), The Glacial Nightmare (1893) and Ice or Water? (1905).
Howorth was just about the last of the old school catastrophists, and was a severe critic of George Lyell, the father of Uniformitarianism. Howorth was a firm believer in a Great Flood, though I am not clear if this was religion based or not.
verdeviewer
July 30, 2015 at 11:35 am
As for a link to the Bu Zu Gon Rom, you’d have to ask Howorth, who died in 1923, well before the internet.
You’d also need to know what method of transliteration he used, as B and P often interchange, as do other letters. Beyond that, various methods of transliteration from Chinese to English have been used over the past century or two, witness Peiking, now more properly rendered as Beijing 北京, meaning Northern Capital, but changed during the KMT period to Peiping (Northern Peace), when Nanking – now Nanjing – was its capital.
The further complication is that we don’t even know which dialect of Chinese Howorth was using, as Wikipedia notes:
Perhaps a native speaker of Chinese would be able to shed more light on this question. My attempts with Google translate bore no fruit.
But in any event, it’s not really the critical point you’re trying to make it be. There are numerous accounts of seemingly quick-frozen mammoths, rhinos, and other beasts entombed in the muck of N. Siberia, including McKay’s. The local people didn’t know what to make of these creatures when they found them, and they did the best they could, burdened with their ignorance, which seems to have been passed on to the Chinese, who were well acquainted with the ivory they used for carving.
Presence of the frozen mammoth remains in Siberia is confirmed in this recent NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/world/europe/25iht-mammoth.4.11415717.html?_r=0
There are also huge muck deposits and boneyards in Alaska, uncovering during gold mining operations, and investigated by the likes of F. Hibben and S. Taber.
Finally, as far as I know, none of the mammoth remains found in N. Siberia or on the New Siberian Islands such as Kotelnoi (Kotelniy) shows any signs of prehistoric butchering or hunting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Siberian_Islands
Cheers.
Steve P –
Very good information. Thanks for posting. If you’d ever care to have your brain picked on this topic, I’d be interested. Drop by my blog at Feet2theFire.wordpress.com sometime.
Steve P: “…disparage and mock…”
Perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh. But when hearsay gets multiple translations, I think it’s absurd to take it at face value. I disparage and mock unverifiable claims given more credence than they deserve. I see a lot of that here applied to claims by “climate scientists.”
Henry Hoyle Howorth was a lawyer, politician, armchair antiquarian, prolific writer, and apparently the only source for the supposed Bu Zu Gon Rom. Knowing the correct Chinese dialect is irrelevant, as there would certainly be other references to a “great natural history written in the sixteenth century” if it exists. Based on Howorth’s letters to Charles Darwin, I venture a guess that Howorth was putting to words something he got from a conversation.
A bit of searching reveals that Howorth was almost certainly referring to the Bencao Gangmu—Compendium of Materia Medica of Li Shizhen. A translation is available from Amazon for only $1,096.00.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PGBWY1fQL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
As for Claudine Cohen, she apparently wrote an interesting book. But anyone who thinks it’s a good thing to bring mammoths back to life in a world that can’t support the social structure they’re designed to thrive in has a lot in common with Victor Frankenstein.
The Monkey of the Inkpot
“This animal, common in the north, is four or five inches long; its eyes are scarlet and its fur is jet black, silky, and soft as a pillow. It is marked with a curious instinct – the taste for India ink. When a person sits down to write, the monkey squats cross-legged nearby with one forepaw folded over the other, waiting until the task is over. Then it drinks what is left of the ink, and afterward sits back on its haunches, quiet and satisfied.”
— Wang Tai-Hai, 1791
http://www.amazon.com/The-Monkey-Inkpot-Natural-Transformations/dp/0674035291
Ahh, WONDERFUL! I finally found the paper from 2002 that culls the Clovis>Mammoth kill sites down to only 12. I was correct about 12 mammoth kills. Overall, there are 14 – and ONLY 14 – megafauna kill sites connected with Clovis. TWO of them are mastodon kill sites.
No OTHER megafauna kill sites connected to Clovis Man exist – despite the popular thinking that they do exist.
NO OTHER MEGAFAUNA KILL SITES CONNECTED TO CLOVIS EXIST.
All the rest of the sites are – one by one – excluded by this paper by Grayson and Meltzer, two big names in the field.
http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Dedman/Departments/Anthropology/MeltzerPDFs/Grayson%20and%20Meltzer%202002%20JWP%20Clovis%20hunting%20and%20large%20mammal%20extinction.ashx?la=en
Clovis Hunting and Large Mammal Extinction: A Critical Review of the Evidence
Donald K. Grayson and David J. Meltzer
Badda BING, Badda BOOM.
Meltzer, you may recall, is one of the skeptics who in 2014 co-authored a paper skeptical of the YDB hypothesis – for which the current Kennett paper is essentially a rebuttal:
Chronological evidence fails to support claim of an isochronous widespread layer of cosmic impact indicators dated to 12,800 years ago http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040610/
FYI, “isochronous” is perhaps the wrong word there.
[Wiki] “A sequence of events is isochronous if the events occur regularly, or at equal time intervals.”
Thus, isochronous applies to repeating, regular occurences, not one time events.