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Oct. 29th, 2005 04:25 pmComets Hit Early Americans, Scientist Says
A supernova could be the "quick and dirty" explanation for what may have happened to an early North American culture, a nuclear scientist here said Thursday.
Richard Firestone said at the "Clovis in the Southeast" conference that he thinks "impact regions" on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Mich., were caused by magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. This composition, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist said, resembles rocks that were discovered on the moon and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago.
Firestone said that, based on his discovery of similar material at Clovis sites, he estimates that comets struck the solar system during the Clovis period, which was roughly 13,000 years ago. These comets would have hit the Earth at 1,000 kilometers an hour, he said, obliterating many life forms and causing mutations in others.
"I'm not going to tell you that there's Clovis people on the moon, or that they had a space program," Firestone said. But these particles look "very much like the material that comes from the moon, which is the only place we've found with this same high titanium concentration."
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A supernova could be the "quick and dirty" explanation for what may have happened to an early North American culture, a nuclear scientist here said Thursday.
Richard Firestone said at the "Clovis in the Southeast" conference that he thinks "impact regions" on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Mich., were caused by magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. This composition, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist said, resembles rocks that were discovered on the moon and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago.
Firestone said that, based on his discovery of similar material at Clovis sites, he estimates that comets struck the solar system during the Clovis period, which was roughly 13,000 years ago. These comets would have hit the Earth at 1,000 kilometers an hour, he said, obliterating many life forms and causing mutations in others.
"I'm not going to tell you that there's Clovis people on the moon, or that they had a space program," Firestone said. But these particles look "very much like the material that comes from the moon, which is the only place we've found with this same high titanium concentration."
( Read more... )