[meteorite-list] Impact Origin of Carolina Bays Argued For at 2007AGU Meeting

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:33:33 -0600
Message-ID: <014e01c763a7$31554ab0$c622e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, List,

    Thanks, Paul, for those links.

    If you're not familiar with the Carolina Bays,
Listees, here's a page with links to every theory
about them:
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cbaymenu.html

    Some fascinating and non-fascinating things
here. The list of logical connections that may mean
nothing at all is very long.

    Was there a mammoth extinction event? Most
diggers, bonemen, and that crowd say no, but on the
other hand when's the last time you saw a mammoth?

    Why would a mild cooling spell extinct a cold-adapted
mammal like the mammoth? Did the mammoths die
out at once or over 1000 years? 2000 years? 4000
years?

    How fast is an "event"? How slow? With an ice age
ending, how badly do you need an impact to explain
extinctions? As far as that goes, how big an impact
event do you need to explain an excess of frog ponds
in the Carolinas?

    One of the presenters has advocated that the Bays
formed by steam explosions from a thermal airburst
event, formed out of beaver ponds, a particularly choice
notion in view of the fact that one of the fauna extincted
was the Giant Beaver!

    North America lost 5 species of American Horses, a
few species of Western Camels, the North American llamas,
two genera of Deer, two genera of Pronghorns, the Stag-Moose,
Shrub-Oxen, Woodland Muskoxen, the Giant Beaver, the
Shasta Ground Sloth and other Ground Sloths, Short-Faced
Bears like the Cave Bear (big), Saber-toothed cats, the American
Lion (bigger than the African Lion), the American Cheetah,
the Dire Wolf, several species of Mammoth, the American
Mastodont (Mammut americanum), the Giant Bison, and the
Giant Peccary (the super Pig)!

    Altogether, in 50,000 years North America lost 33 genera
of large mammals, and 15 genera in the period from 11,500
to 10,000 years ago. At least, we don't have to worry about
the Bunyip (a Giant Killer Bunny Wabbit The Size of A Truck).
The Diprotodon is Australia's problem...

    Worthy of note: the inclusion of Luann Becker, who I
suspect has something to do with the "newly uncovered
evidence for ET impact at 12.9 ka including end-Clovis age
sediments throughout North America with high levels of
Iridium, magnetic [sic., probably magnetite] and carbon,
spherules, glass-like carbon, fullerenes, and ET noble gas
ratios often in association with carbonaceous black layers
and succeeded by black mats with unusual biota."
Particularly with those fullerenes!

    Firestone, who is an expert on isotopes (he wrote
the book on them, literally; he is the Chief Editor of the
Table of Isotopes, 8th Edition). I would not doubt
anything he says... about isotopes. But he has advanced
some utterly ridiculous explanations of his findings, such
as "interstellar comets formed in a supernova" impacting
at -- what was it? -- 10,000 miles per second? This
naturally tends to make people dismiss the while thing.

    However, there is no reason why, as the world expert
on isotopes, he would be any better at explaining how
they got there than say, a Ph.D. in French Literature
would be... or an Economist.

    Something happened. No one really knows what.
It left traces. No one really knows whether they imply
any other events or not. Whole genera of animals became
extinct. No one knows if there's any connection. The
list of what we don't know is much longer than the
list of what we do.

    And if you're wondering what the Younger Dryas
is... After the ice age started to end and the ice caps
started to melt rapidly, they suddenly slowed down
and almost stopped melting, then they began to rapidly
melt again after the Younger Dryas. Obviously, a
cooling episode... well, maybe.

    It can be explained by the fact that what was melting
the ice caps was a rapid warming of the glacial climate
by mid-level warm oceanic water flows to the poles. When
the polar began to melt in earnest, the runoff of cold fresh
water into polar seas slowed and almost stopped those
warm flows. After that initial runoff, the warm currents
resumed and the ice caps were doomed.

    No comets, impacts, nor any other exotic event is
required by way of explanation. No "cooling" is needed,
just a weakening of an ocean current, an oscillation in
the warming process caused by the warming itself.

    Global warming -- ya gotta love it.


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul" <bristolia at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:00 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Impact Origin of Carolina Bays Argued For at
2007AGU Meeting


Dear Friends,

Apparently, there is going to be some interesting papers
at the 2007 Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical
Union as there will be a session presenting evidence for
an impact having occurred during Younger-Dyras times
at the "end of the last Ice Age. Below are links to
representative abstracts:

1. Evidence for an Extraterrestrial Impact Event 12,900 years
ago that Contributed to Megafaunal Extinctions and the Younger
Dryas Cooling

http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener/ConvenerView.asp?ref=1388


2. Formation of the Carolina Bays: ET Impact vs. Wind-and-Water

http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener/ConvenerView.asp?ref=1334

3. Extraterrestrial Markers Found at Clovis Sites Across North
America

http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener/ConvenerView.asp?ref=1393


4. Is There Evidence for Impact-Triggered Fires at the End
Pleistocene?

http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener/ConvenerView.asp?ref=513

The session itself is " PP05: New Insights into Younger Dryas
Climatic Instability, Mass Extinction, the Clovis People, and
Extraterrestrial Impacts

http://www.agu.org/meetings/ja07/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=159


It looks like Firestone and his supporters are refining their
arguments and dropping the implausible ones, i.e. the so-called
meteor crater in Lake Michigan, and concentrating on what they
regard the basic evidence for their ideas.

Best Regards,

Paul H.




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Received on Sun 11 Mar 2007 01:33:33 AM PST