Did an Exploding Comet Doom Early Americans?

New Scientist outlines a new theory on the demise of the Clovis people in the southwest US over 10,000 years ago. A group of 25 researchers speculates that a comet exploded over ice-covered Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered a firestorm across North America that not only wiped out the Clovis people but also forced a number of large land mammals into extinciton and kicked off the Younger Dryas climate change. However, geologists are pretty conservative folks, according to the article, and some of them are not buying it.

Comments

LOL What?

[AssCork]

Humans have only existed for 4000 years. What a joke....

Re:LOL What?

[Anonymous Coward]

And besides that the first American, Jesus, only live 2000 years ago.

Re:Younger Dryas

[Bearpaw]

According to Wikipedia, the Younger Dryashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas was not preceeded by the Older Wetass. It was a short period of time between the Pleistocene and the current Holocene climate eras.

So ... when were the Dumas and Smartas periods?

Confusing Sentence Structure

[andrewd18]

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from.

I definitely read this as:

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week, the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco Mexico: that's where the Clovis people's doom came from.

I hate it when my doom comes from American Geophysical Union meetings in Acapulco, Mexico.

Re:Younger Dryas

[Dr Caleb]

"So ... when were the Dumas and Smartas periods?"

When FreeRepublic and Fark went online.

Re:Geologists are indeed conservative.

[nizo]

Just goes to show that the most important thing you can learn in school is to evaluate the data yourself.

Yes indeed! My math teacher told me that PI is an irrational number; as soon as I am done computing it out to infinity I will know this fact for myself, but until then I am still pretty skeptical.

Re:Reflected across the world

[Ramble]

Are you crazy? No-one on /. RTFA.

Re:So if humans want to survive we should

[DohnJoe]

So if humans want to survive things like this in the future we should go back to living deep in caves I think most slashdotters are already aware of this danger, living in the safety of their parents basement ;)

Teh community will be saved!!!

Re:So if humans want to survive we should

[R2.0]

For 1 generation. Then the total lack of women basement dwellers will doom the race.

Re:So if humans want to survive we should

[Grishnakh]

That's why we need to become highly active in do-it-yourself genetic engineering. Then we can grow our own females in our basements. And our genetically engineered females will be superior to natural ones, as we can design them to be thin, beautiful, bisexual, and only interested in geeks (and other hot women).

Re:So if humans want to survive we should

[DohnJoe]

I guess the first words those women hear will be: 'please be gentle'

The Dumas period was:

[einhverfr]

July 24, 1802 - December 5, 1870, according to Wikipedia.

Don't know about the Smartas period though.

Re:Geologists are indeed conservative.

[fractoid]

"You know how Einstein got bad grades? Yeah, well MINE are even WORSE!" - Calvin