Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans? - space - 22 May 2007 - New Scientist Space

Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans? - space - 22 May 2007 - New Scientist Space:

The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.

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."

These claims are pretty wild, but they're interesting. If the researchers are right, the Clovis people didn't kill off all the big North American mammals and then starve to death. Instead the lot were wiped out by hellfire and brimstone. Or, rather, by ice, rock and dust that started some very big fires.



Update: If you have an online subscription to Scientific American, the New Scientist article above might make an interesting contrast to this recent article on restoring Pleistocene-era big mammals to North America.

The theory--propounded 40 years ago by Paul Martin of the University of Arizona--is that overhunting by the new arrivals reduced the numbers of large vertebrates so severely that the populations could not recover.

Also see the Pleistocene Rewilding website. It looks like White Man's Burden with a paleontological twist.