In this issue of Science (p. 94), a group of nine researchers presents the latest evidence for a cosmic catastrophe just 12,900 years ago. Last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), six of these authors—along with 20 others—made a wide-ranging case for a shower of exploding comet fragments over the North American ice sheet. Such a cataclysm could have wiped out mammoths and other large mammals, abruptly ended the Paleo-Indian Clovis culture, and triggered a millennium-long return to near-glacial cold. The idea met with skepticism in the community of impact researchers.
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Richard A. Kerr (2009) studied this question.
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