Embedded resistance to the YD boundary event is evident in the post at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100830152530.htm (see also www.physorg.com ), a report on a paper published in the August 30th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Tyrone Daulton, Pinter and Scott et al. They say they could find no evidence of nanodiamonds in YD boundary material – and this means the impact hypothesis has lost it’s sparkle. The paper is supposed to be the final nail in the head following several sceptical articles over the last few months. Nanodiamonds were the big headache for the consensus view – they have a definite cosmic origin. Hence, in denying their existence they are denying a cosmic event could have taken place. Instead, they say the material interpreted by the YD impact team was a form of carbon related to graphite. The same paper is discussed at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/30/younger-dryas-space-impact-theory-missing-the-nanodiamonds/ (obtained via Eurekalert) which is a first time as only a couple of months ago they were pitching into Mike Baillie. Some interesting comments at the end of the post which included the manner of the mammoths demise, catastrophic or uniformitarian. The carcasses found upright in the Siberian permafrost have been explained by the upper permafrost layer partially melting (possibly in the Mid Holocene Warm Period) and then refreezing (how many times might this have happened?), a process that is capable of forcing rocks up and out of or to the top of the permafrost which must also be the same for the mammoths. As the body is pushed upwards it rotates the larger area to the top – thus the legs are below so that it looks as if it was buried standing up. This ingenious explanation may have some validity – but it assumes the mammoths were laying on their sides. Is this a warranted assumption? Another commenter throws in the line, reasonable or otherwise, the animals could have been buried in liquid mud which then froze quickly, preserving the carcasses. There was also a persistent commenter who had obviously been reading material from www.thunderbolts.info but his chronology of different events was disposed to lump them altogether in one incident rather than suppose more than one event took place.
Last word must go to http://cosmictusk.com/tusk-exclusive-bunch-makes-brief-comments-on-daulton-paper/ where Ted Bunch summarises Daulton as a competent scientist but Scott and Pinter were the real problem. He gives seven reasons why the paper is inept (his words), i) they did not collect from the YDB layer at the Arlington site that was used in the two Kennett et al papers but from layers that contained ‘carbonaceous particles’, mostly charcoal – there are no diamonds in charcoal and it is not clear that they even sampled the YDB. ii) They did not collect or process material from the YDB sediment at Murray Springs which contains most of the nanodiamonds, iii) yes, we also saw graphene, graphane and chaoite, but these are not diamonds. iv) They analysed microcharcoal and glassy carbone for diamonds and found none, neither did we. v) Two of the reviewers of the Kennett et al papers are world class shock and diamond experts – they had no problems. vi) One independent stratigrapher who read the Daulton paper was astonished at the complete ineptness of field protocol and sample characterisation, and vii) the Greenland paper due out in September will say they have found nanodiamonds in the ice sheet, which proves once and for all that nanodiamonds do indeed occur in the YDB