Did a Significant Cool Spell Mark the Demise of Megafauna?
The end of the Pleistocene Epoch was marked with steadily warmer temperatures and the great ice age glaciers that covered vast areas of North America were in retreat. Except for a 1,000-year period when things once again suddenly got remarkably colder, the cause of which is a mystery that researchers of the period have argued over for years. Geologically, the start of this period is marked by a “black mat” of organically rich soil. Below the mat is the evidence of late Pleistocene flora and fauna, including the very large animals that once roamed across North America: mammoth and mastodons, dire wolves, horses, short-faced bears and others. Also just below the line is the evidence of the humans who hunted these animals, called Clovis for their large fluted stone spear points first found by archaeologists at Clovis, N.M. Above the line, neither the megafauna nor the Clovis points are anywhere to be found. C. Vance Haynes Jr., a Regents’ Professor of anthropology and geosciences at The U
