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- The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis proposes that an asteroid or comet hit the Earth about 12,800 years ago, causing a period of extreme cooling that contributed to extinctions of more than 35 species of megafauna including giant sloths, sabre-tooth cats, mastodons and mammoths.
- It is controversial from the time it was presented in 2007.
- It also coincides with a serious decline in early human populations such as the Clovis culture and is believed to have caused massive wildfires that could have blocked sunlight, causing an ‘impact winter’ near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Recent Study
- Based on research at White Pond near Elgin, South Carolina, archaeologists present new evidence of a The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.
- The study builds on similar findings of platinum spikes — an element associated with cosmic objects like asteroids or comets — in North America, Europe, western Asia and recently in Chile and South Africa.
