Scientists decode what caused extinction of animals in the Ice Age

According to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, an extraterrestrial body crashed to Earth almost 13,000 years ago causing the extinction of many large animals and a probable population decline in early humans. The findings were based on a research work at White Pond near Elgin, South Carolina. The study was built on similar findings of platinum spikes, an element associated with cosmic objects like asteroids or comets, in North America, Europe, western Asia and recently in Chile and South Africa. According the reports, a team of archaeologists has also found unusually high concentrations of platinum and iridium in outwash sediments from a recently discovered crater in Greenland that could have been the impact point.

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Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis 

All the studies related to such theories trace back to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis which was presented in 2007 and proposes that an asteroid or comet hit the Earth about 12,800 years ago causing a period of extreme cooling that contributed to extinctions of more than 35 species of megafauna including giant sloths, saber-tooth cats, mastodons, and mammoths. The claim astonishingly coincidences with a decline in the human population in Clovis culture. The asteroid is believed to have caused massive wildfires that could have blocked sunlight, causing an "impact winter" near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.

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University of South Carolina archaeologist Christopher Moore, who is a part of the study, said that there have been numerous papers that have come out in the past couple of years with similar data from other sites that almost universally support the notion that there was an extraterrestrial impact or comet airburst that led to the Younger Dryas climate event. 

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Reason behind decline in human population & animals remains unclear

The crater which has been found in Greenland is yet to be dated, but can prove to be the key aspect of proving the event, said Moore.  Another data collected from South America suggest the event may have actually included multiple impacts and airbursts over the entire globe, added Moore. On the other hand, the reasons for the decline of human populations and animals have remained unclear though the ice-age conditions have been established in almost all papers. Scientists claimed that the period lasted for 1,400 years. The new theory claims that the failure of glacial ice dams allowed a massive release of freshwater into the North Atlantic, affecting oceanic circulation and causing the Earth to plunge into a cold climate wheres Younger Dryas hypothesis simply claims that the cosmic impact was the trigger for the meltwater pulse into the oceans.

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Moore said that the impact contributed to the extinction, but it wasn't the only cause. Overhunting by humans was a major factor too, so was climate change.

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