At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240626152057.htm … James Kennett et al report on the presence of proxies associated with a cosmic airburst event that was distributed over several separate sites in New Jersey, Maryland, and South Carolina. The evidence included shocked quartz – stress great enough to deform the crystal structure of quartz, a very hard rock. Melt glass is another feature of airburst events – also associated with atomic bombs.
William sent in a link to the same story at MSN.
Moving further back in time, at https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ammonites-fate-meteor-dinosaurs.html … we have a headline that claims the fate of the Ammonites coincided with the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Interesting they have meteor rather than asteroid – or a comet. Ammonites were a marine animal with coiled shells. They were not in decline before their extinction 66 million years ago – at the K/T boundary event. In the UK they are commonly found in Jurassic geology. There are fields in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire where one can pick up pieces of ammonite brought to the surface by ploughing. How did so many get washed up on dry land? Geologists claim that during the Cretaceous, and Jurassic, the coastlines were different. This is quite possible if there had been changes in earth’s geoid. However, that is not part of mainstream thinking. Catastrophism is generally ignored.
See also https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49462-z ….
Finally, at https://phys.org/news/2024-07-drought-theory-cahokia-exodus.html … we are much nearer the present in this study, at the point where the Cahokia Mounds were seemingly abandoned by humans. The settlement was just over the Mississippi River from modern St Louis. It was a healthy and well populated place in the 14th century – until at some point it wasn’t. By AD1400 it was almost deserted. Why? One theory is that drought led to a massive crop failure. However, a new study has found there was no change in crops being grown, suggesting the drought idea was over egged. The abandonment may therefore be due to other factors. Surely, bubonic plague could not have reached North America. This led to a massive drop in population in the Old World – but how could it have reached North America. At the same point in history. The plague ravaged Europe and Asia, and surprisingly, Africa too. One would have to question the traditional method of spread – by fleas on rats, and human contact with other humans that had the plague. It was extraordinarily potent in the years leading up to AD1400 – and one might have to think of airborne transmission instead. A bit like modern bird flu. Is that realistic?