12,900 years old Nanodiamonds discovered in North American sites - All hail, The Comet Hit!!!

A team of nine scientific members found abundant tiny particles of diamond dust that existed in sediments as old as 12,900 years ago. These sediments were discovered in six different North American sites. This also adds strong evidence that Nanodiamonds were formed due to Earth’s impact with a rare swarm of carbon and water rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites .

Nanodiamonds are produced under high pressure and high temperature conditions that are created by cosmic impacts. Such cosmic impacts have been found in meteorites that are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at Murray Springs, Ariz, Bull Creek, Okla., Gainey, Mich., and Topper, S.C., as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada.

Nanodiamonds can also be produced on Earth but only through high-explosive detonations or chemical vaporizations. Reporting in the Jan. 2nd issue of journal Science, a team led by the University of Oregon’s Douglas J. Kennett discovered billions of nanometer-sized diamonds concentrated in sediments. These sediments were found in six locations in North America during digs funded by National Science Foundation and weighed from between 10 to 2,700 parts per billion.

Kennet who is a UO archaeologist said, “The Nanodiamonds hat we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above or below it.” He added, “These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America.”

Last year, a team of researchers proposed that a cosmic impact event could have set off 1,300 year long cold spell known as the ‘Younger Dryas.’ It was proposed that Younger Dryas fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and led to the extinction of a large range of animals including mammoths across North America. The Clovis culture was primarily constituted of hunters and gatherers and it was first discovered after hunting tools referred to as Clovis points were discovered in mammoth’s skeletons in 1926 near Clovis, N.M.

These Clovis sites were later identified across the United States, Mexico and Central America. The peak of Clovis era is considered to have run from 13,200 to 12,900 years ago. It is assumed that the Clovis people entered North America across a land bridge from Siberia. One of the reported diamonds rich sediment layers also sit on top of Clovis materials at the Murray Springs site.

With this discovery of Nanodiamonds, a link has been established between cosmic impacts that may have created these Nanodiamonds rich sediments, the 1,300 year long cold spell, Younger Dryas, and the extinction of Clovis culture around 12,900 years ago.