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EVENT: Diamonds, Mammoths, and Comets
DATE/TIME: March 3, 2009, at 6:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Casa Vicente, 375 S. Stone Avenue, Tucson, AZ.
At this lively Archaeology Café meeting, Dr. West discussed the provocative, internationally-debated theory that an enormous space object—probably a fragmented comet—exploded over the northern hemisphere 12,900 years ago. Allen is one of 26 scientists from 18 institutions who have teamed up to bring together multiple lines of evidence that may reveal this cataclysmic event. The scientists propose that the impact produced massive detonations with more force than the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. In the aftermath, North America and Western Europe were dusted with nanodiamonds, magnetic spherules, iridium, black carbon, and fullerenes filled with helium-3. Millions of animals perished—which, the team argues, ultimately led to catastrophic extinctions, a decline in human populations, and a major reorganization of the Clovis culture.
ABOUT ALLEN WEST
Dr. Allen West (GeoScience Consulting) is an author, inventor, and retired geophysical consultant to oil-and-gas and mining companies in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Middle East, and South America. Allen has appeared in television programs for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, History Channel, and PBS’s NOVA series.
View Dr. Todd Surovell’s 2011 Archaeology Café, in which he disputes the comet-impact theory and shares his ideas about what caused extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene.