Mark Boslough

Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185

Petaev et al. (1) tested the suite of hypotheses (collectively known as the “impact hypothesis”) that a swarm of impacts or airbursts from comets, chondritic, or stony asteroids caused an abrupt climate change, continental-scale wildfires, mass extinctions, and collapse of the Clovis culture at or near the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB). The authors identify a large Pt anomaly in the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) core and suggest that it hints at an extraterrestrial source. Because there is no corresponding Ir spike, Petaev et al. challenge the impact hypothesis by proposing a highly fractionated iron meteorite. The Pt anomaly predates ammonimum and nitrate peaks in the GISP2 core by decades, eliminating …

Reference
Boslough M (2013) Greenland Pt anomaly may point to noncataclysmic Cape York meteorite entry. PNAS 110:E5035.
[doi:10.1073/pnas.1320328111]

Link to Article