Prehistoric meteor shower? Options

[tty]

A real weird news story from Nature about meteor damage to pleistocene fossils:

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071212/ful...s.2007.372.html

If traces of this meteor shower has been found in both Siberia and Alaska as the story implies, then multiple impactors must have been involved. Such small meterites would lose speed quickly so the airburst must have occurred at fairly low altitude.

[TheChemist]

If I understood well, this refers mainly to a 12,9 ka impact that seems to have been proposed by the same author in different abstracts of the same (?) conference. I think these abstracts are not available yet on the net.

The abstract which is the subject of this thread refers to a supposed 30-35 ka impact. Would not a "normal constant infall of sand-sized micrometeorites " result in a more common occurence of mammoth skulls looking like those described in this thread ?

So although the criticism is good and absolutely necessary against the general "easy solution through impact" fever, for the specific case discussed in this thread I remain in the dark.
And I am sure there are a lot more scientists (maybe 1 out of 2) responsible for the loss of scientific credibility in the recent decades through "extensive advertising" of their own work. A bit too outspoken.

[dburt]

If I understood well, this refers mainly to a 12,9 ka impact that seems to have been proposed by the same author in different abstracts of the same (?) conference. I think these abstracts are not available yet on the net.

The abstract which is the subject of this thread refers to a supposed 30-35 ka impact. Would not a "normal constant infall of sand-sized micrometeorites " result in a more common occurence of mammoth skulls looking like those described in this thread ?

Further comment, made in less of a rush (after looking at the GSA Today article again). Although the original news story refers to the older time period, the more complete BBC story contains the original author quote: "The date could really be anywhere from 13,000 to 35-40,000 years ago." and the reporter then states, "The team believes there must still be peppered tusks out there that can be dated to 13,000 years ago." Certainly the authors (Firestone et al.) are the same and their hypothesis is the same. The mega-tsunami part of the GSA Today article actually refers to more recent (Holocene, or latest 10,000 years) alleged impact events - my memory over the weekend was faulty. And I freely admit I still haven't read the original AGU abstracts or AGU poster.

-- HDP Don