Getting your player ready...
Researchers are reporting that abrupt cooling that occurred about 12,900 years ago, just as Earth was emerging from an ice age — may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.
That could explain the extinction of mammoths and maybe even the first human inhabitants of the Americas, the scientists report in today’s issue of Science.
The hypothesis has been regarded skeptically, but its advocates now report perhaps more convincing residue of impact: a thin layer of microscopic diamonds found in rocks across America and in Europe.
