Science News Review

About those Mammoths? …Never Mind.

Jan 27 at 8:08pm by Aileen

On the fifth of this month I posted Supernovae, Comets and Holey Mammoth Tusks, about a recently-developed theory with apparently lots and lots of confirming evidence, that purported to demonstrate the mass extinction of North American megafauna – wooly mammoths, giant bison, saber-tooth cats, etc. – was the result of effects from a supernova explosion 250 light years from earth, and a 10-kilometer wide comet produced that hit or exploded just above Chicago nearly 13,000 years ago.

Well, this week researchers from the University of Bristol say they have disproven that theory, by examining charcoal and pollen records for the great fires the comet must have caused. Their results, they say, provide no evidence of continental-scale fires. Though they do say their examination of this material dated between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago, somehow establishes that an increase in large-scale wildfires all over the world during the past 10 years is attributable to global warming.

Ah, well. So much for grand theories about great and sudden climate change in past ages, as well as ongoing disagreements about climate change in the current age. Perhaps what is best to be learned from this back and forth of disagreements about evidence and what it means is to take the pronouncements of various groups of scientists with a grain of salt, for their conclusions are often so short-lived as to not even make it past the publication schedule of two successive issues of the same journal!

Eventually, maybe, they’ll work it all out.

And while we’re here looking at research from different sources that can end up with entirely different conclusions, check out a new project site from Creative Commons – ScienceCommons. Making the Web work for science, to develop technologies to make research, accumulated data and materials easier to find and use. I’ll be reporting on this again in the near future, so stay tuned!

Links:

Supernovae, Comets and Holey Mammoth Tusks
North American Comet Impact Theory Disproved
ScienceCommons