Posted on 10/04/2005 11:47:27 PM PDT by planetesimal
A supernova blast 41,000 years ago started a deadly chain of events that led to the extinction of mammoths and other animals in North America, according to two scientists.
If their supernova theory gains acceptance, it could explain why dozens of species on the continent became extinct 13,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
well, time to change those science books AGAIN as another theory falls on its face. apparently. maybe. for a while.
Neandertal DNA is not close enough to Homo sapiens DNA for this to happen.
BS. they are closer than horses and asses.
Besides, nobody said the breeding was successful (yielded viable offspring).
How long before it's blamed on President Bush?
It's hard to call it "breeding" when nothing is born.
Bush doesn't care about mammoths.
Go learn the difference between horses and asses and donkeys, and then perhaps we can have this discussion.
Remember, its not my theory, but its one possible explanation of that phrase.
I hate it when giants bread with me. Let them get their own bread. You know how big a loaf those guys can eat?
In addition to the tusk evidence, the scientists said arrowheads from North America's prehistoric Clovis culture, which went extinct around 13,500-13,000 years ago, Icelandic marine sediment, as well as sediment from nine 13,000-year-old sites in North America, contain higher-than-normal amounts of radiation in the form of potassium-40 levels.This is by no means settled science, but interesting nonetheless.
LOL! Thanks, Kanye!
I'm waiting. I'm still waiting. Still waiting. Still.....
I'm waiting. I'm still waiting. Still waiting. Still.....Why not try a personal ad? Or take up a hobby.
I seriously doubt the 'hunted to death' theory. What really piques my interest is the frozen mastadons found in Siberia that have fresh flowers in their teeth, and unprocessed vegetation in their gastric system. It's like they just up and died, and froze, in minutes.
Up here in Alaska, and I speculate also in Siberia, you can have a thin layer of melted earth in the spring, and flowers blooming in just a week or so of sunshine. But underneath you have permafrost.
However there are sink holes with water running underneath, and iced over lakes/rivers that look walk-able. Walk out, fall in, and freeze next to or under the permafrost.
But that's in spring. Wouldn't the coming warming, albeit a short warm season, allow predation and deterioration?
Author doesn't know what she's talking about.....Michael Moore is still around.
I can't think of a single person, let alone scientist, who denies that glaciation occurs in cycles governed by solar and planetary factors. I can think of somebody who aims to profit directly from a dubious collation of information. The guy flogging that book.
Not if the carcase sinks into the permafrost. Gets covered with muskeg (no oxygen) and gets frozen even in mid summer.
Siberia is generally fairly flat, and in such places holes tend to get iced over, (often year round) OR muskeg forms a layer over a small lake or hole. The muskeg might be 10 feet thick but its floating. Big animals call fall through (or little animals in the case of my little brother who had to be pulled out of a muskeg hole while picking blueberries one year), and sink to the bottom where the lake may never thaw.
Flowers do not necessarily mean spring. There are flowers up here that bloom late (since summer is so short).
Your position then seems plausible. Contrary to popular belief, SD has no permafrost, and so I'm not familiar with the peculiarity of the geography. However, I have not seen this position forwarded in what I've read of scientific work on these beasts.
The 6,214 miles-per-second iron-rich grains would have riddled everything like bullets.
Well I can't think of any other way something as large as a mammoth can die X thousand years ago and be almost intact today. It has to fall into some place where it freezes and gets burried quickly because the north will not allow a food source to go unused for long.
By the way, another mammoth was just discovered in Siberia.
Very cool. I find the idea of perhaps cloning one very fascinating. I'm much more interested in the more recent mega fauna, such as the Mastadon or the giant sloths, than the dinosaurs.
Where do you think lieberals come from? And ol' Red Zone?
Well, "the guy flogging his book" sold one to me, and I read and thoroughly enjoyed it, and learned a few things about the author's branch of plate tectonics theory studies. I lent it to my dad, but it seems to have gone missing.
For the price, I'll probably buy another, and not just because I was intrigued by the scenario presented, but because I LOVE reading.
He also goes into magnetism and galaxial mechanics (albeit merely glancing off same) in a most unique manner in the book.
I'm not saying he's dead right, nor is he dead wrong, but he presents a series of compelling arguments for his theory, and is worth reading. He does sometimes seem to be preaching at times, mind you, but what author doesn't? < BG >.
Aw, hell. There goes another two hundred billion...
Call me crazy, but we share 95% of the DNA of most primates, yes? Ceretainly, our DNA is close to that of Neanderthals.
Seems the much more likely explanation is the arrival of man at about the same time. The same thing happened to many large mammal species in Australia after mankind arrived on that continent.

Dima, a frozen baby Mammoth In 1977, the first of two complete baby mammoths was founda 612-month-old male named Dima. His flattened, emaciated, but well-preserved body was enclosed in a lens of ice, 6 feet below the surface of a gentle mountainous slope.1 Portions of the ice were clear and others quite brownish yellow with mineral and organic particles.2 Silt, clay, and small particles of gravel were found throughout his digestive and respiratory tracts (trachea, bronchi, and lungs). These details are important clues in understanding frozen mammoths. Because most mammoths were fat and well fed, Dima may have suffered before death from one of the many problems common to baby elephants. Within their first year of life, 536% of elephants die.
Reference? I doubt you have any of this Neardertal DNA, but there are many scientists who believe Neadertal DNA is widespread in modern day humans.
But an intact sample of pure Neandertal DNA? I think you are daydreaming or reading too much SF.
Actually, what the Bible says is that the "sons of God" bred with the daughters of men and their offspring were "giants." Exactly what this means is highly debatable, but folk memory of Neanderthals is likely to be it.
Any Astronomers here?
Is there any evidence of a Supernova within say, 500 LY of earth within, say, the last 100K years?
Any evidence at all?
Concerning the presently existing astronomical evidence of supernova blasts that have been recorded, how old are they? ( regardless of distance )
How old is the presently seen evidence of those explosions?
Is it fairly easy to recognize the post-supernova evidence?
I don't recall hearing/reading of any nearby (relatively) evidence of large clouds of ionized particles, x-ray emmissions from massively accelerated solar mass, etc....
Seems to me if you're going to claim "supernova killed the mammoths", pitted craters in mammoth tusks is not primary evidence to validate your claim..
The primary evidence is the remains of a supernova..
Where is it???
Sorry, bad wording. I very much doubt folk memory of Neanderthals is behind this Bible story.
My previous posts were written before reading the article.
Bad habit.
But seriously, folks, this is a truly idiotic article. To believe it, you must believe that a supernova 250 light years from Earth affected North America, and only NA, in at least two separate events tens of thousands of years apart.
It seems to me that mammoth tusks riddled with iron-rich particles would be more likely to be related to a localized event, perhaps a volcanic eruption, than to an astronomical event that mysteriously affects all of NA but not the rest of the planet.
You must also believe that saber-toothed cats were less able to take shelter in a cave or elsewhere than elk or moose or (regular-size) bison!
It is possible that the actual science makes more sense than this idiot article.
That was interesting, Thanks.
Geez, how did they ever find out his name???
Easily testable...
If the tusks are riddled with craters, there should be some of the causative material embedded in them, one would think.
A Neandertal mitochondrial DNA sequence has been constructed and compared with homo sapien mitochondrial DNA. The comparison supported the idea that they didn't interbreed.
Seems to me that if there were a Supernova blast within 250 LY of earth, even 40K years ago, there would be ample astronomical evidence of such.
I'd like to know if that is the case also. If anyone in the know could weigh in...

The inlay is made from Mastadon tusk. I did a search for mammoth tusk and found that there is a lot on the market via Ebay, primarily from Siberian origin and sells as carved figurines.
I think fad dieting killed them.
I wonder whether the Northern European troll myths are a folk memory of the last Neaderthals. Presumably places like Norway would have been their last holdouts.
Driver's license I would imagine. Mastodons and mammoths are very law-abiding creatures.
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