A cosmic event in the Ice Age caused a change ... - The Vanguard

MORE INFORMATION

class=”list”>

woolly rhinoceros species gives new clues about the ice age

Madrid. (Europa Press). – Scientists at the University of Cincinnati (USA) have determined that “near the end of the Ice Age ” There was a cosmic event which caused a change climate which forced the vegetation and animals to adapt to a new environment.

experts who have carried out this work, published in PNAS, Sheriden Cave studied in Ohio, located 100 meters below the surface where they can be observed geological layers dating from about 13,000 years ago. There, they have found evidence to support the theory that there was a cosmic event close enough to Earth to melt rock and produce rare geological phenomena.

Specifically, geologists have found carbon spherules that form when substances burn at very high temperatures. These bodies have characteristics that indicate their origin, which may be burning coal, lightning, forest fires or something more extreme.

study’s lead author, Kenneth Tankersley, rocks his team is studying “could only have been formed by the combustion of rock.”

It has also highlighted as “key findings” of his team micrometeorites (small pieces of meteorites and cosmic dust particles that have been in contact with the surface of the Earth); nanodiamonds (microscopic diamonds that were formed when a carbon source undergoes an extreme impact, and often found in meteorite craters) and Lonsdaleite (a rare type of diamond, also called a hexagonal diamond, which are only found in areas like meteor craters) .

The researcher believes that the cosmic event that occurred 12,800 years ago had an effect “immediate and mortal” and long-term side effects were “devastating”. In his view, a comet that grazed Earth’s atmosphere or an asteroid crashed into its surface combustion caused a global scale. The explosion produced a toxic gas that clouded the sky and caused temperatures to plummet.

climate questioned the existence of plant and animal populations and Tankersley produced what has been classified as “winners” and “losers”. For Tankersley, living beings of this period had three options: relocate to other environment where a living could similarly; adjust their lifestyle to adapt to the current environment or extinguish quickly.

“The ‘winners’ chosen one of the first two options, while the ‘losers’, as the woolly mammoth, they chose the latter,” said the expert. “Whatever it was, it caused the extinction,” says Tankersley, who added that “rather, this is probably the first case of forced climate change”.