NDLI: Evidence from central Mexico supporting the Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact hypothesis

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	Isabel, Israde-alcántara Bischoff, James L. Gabriela, Domínguez-vázquez Li, Hong-chun Decarli, Paul S. Bunch, Ted E. Wittke, James H. Weaver, James C. Firestone, Richard B. West, Allen Kennett, James P. Mercer, Chris Xie, Sujing Richman, Eric K. Kinzie, Charles R. Wolbach, Wendy S.
Abstract	We report the discovery in Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico of a black, carbon-rich, lacustrine layer, containing nanodiamonds, microspherules, and other unusual materials that date to the early Younger Dryas and are interpreted to result from an extraterrestrial impact. These proxies were found in a 27-m-long core as part of an interdisciplinary effort to extract a paleoclimate record back through the previous interglacial. Our attention focused early on an anomalous, 10-cm-thick, carbon-rich layer at a depth of 2.8 m that dates to 12.9 ka and coincides with a suite of anomalous coeval environmental and biotic changes independently recognized in other regional lake sequences. Collectively, these changes have produced the most distinctive boundary layer in the late Quaternary record. This layer contains a diverse, abundant assemblage of impact-related markers, including nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, and magnetic spherules with rapid melting/quenching textures, all reaching synchronous peaks immediately beneath a layer containing the largest peak of charcoal in the core. Analyses by multiple methods demonstrate the presence of three allotropes of nanodiamond: n-diamond, i-carbon, and hexagonal nanodiamond (lonsdaleite), in order of estimated relative abundance. This nanodiamond-rich layer is consistent with the Younger Dryas boundary layer found at numerous sites across North America, Greenland, and Western Europe. We have examined multiple hypotheses to account for these observations and find the evidence cannot be explained by any known terrestrial mechanism. It is, however, consistent with the Younger Dryas boundary impact hypothesis postulating a major extraterrestrial impact involving multiple airburst(s) and and/or ground impact(s) at 12.9 ka.
Related Links	http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1110614109
Starting Page	738
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00278424
e-ISSN	10916490
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Issue Number	13
Volume Number	109
Language	English
Publisher	National Academy of Sciences
Publisher Date	2012-03-27
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	National Academy of Sciences
Subject Keyword	General Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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