Impacts, mega-tsunami, and other extraordinary claims. 2008. Nicholas Pinter and Scott E. Ishman. GSA Today 18
Pinter and Ishman have a nice, short, open-access article in the latest GSA Today about the claims for Holocene-age ocean impacts and associated “mega-tsunami,” and a catastrophic impact event suggested at 12.9 ka.
“The 12.9-ka impact theory also runs roughshod over a wide range of other evidence. The claim that American megafauna disappeared precisely at 12.9 ka is contrary to broad evidence that these extinctions were diachronous in space, across genera, and dependent on local geographical conditions (Fiedel, 2008). Similarly, the “black mat” horizons characterized by the Firestone group as a single hemisphere-wide impact-induced wildfire are elsewhere reported as multiple horizons of wetland deposits that span the latest Pleistocene-Holocene (Quade et al., 1998)”.
