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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

'Clovis impact' theory rejected


No nanodiamonds are found.


I reported last year on the novel theory that a meteorite may have caused megafauna extinction in North America (specially) at the end of Pleistocene. This theory relied heavily on alleged evidence of nanodiamonds (carbon spherules containing lonsdaleite, a carbon crystal likened to diamonds and found only in meteorites).

This evidence seems now to be nowhere. That is at least what Tyrone Daulton of Washington University claims: that it is nothing but graphene (graphite) what has been mistaken for lonsdaleite, an error that had happened before.

Source: Science Daily (no paper linked and too lazy to search it myself).

2 comments:

terryt said...

"I reported last year on the novel theory that a meteorite may have caused megafauna extinction in North America (specially) at the end of Pleistocene".

So that's one theory of their extinction demolished. Got any others?

Maju said...

"Got any others?"

Global warming? Really not worried about solving this issue myself. It's not central to my understanding of Prehistory.