11 Nov 09 - About 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere descended
into a period of glaciation known as the Younger Dryas, which lasted
around 1,300 years. The Younger Dryas - named after
an alpine/tundra wildflower - marked the extinction of the
mammoth, the mastodon, and many other ice-age animals, and marked
the disappearance of the Clovis culture in North America.
William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan and his
colleagues studied a mud core of Younger Dryas age taken from an
ancient lake in Ireland. Using a scalpel, they sliced layers from
the core measuring 0.5 to 1 millimeter thick (the thickness of 10 to
25 hairs). Each layer represented up to three months of time.
The researchers determined that temperatures plummeted within a
matter of months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking
Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says
Patterson.
As you know if you’ve read
either Not by Fire but by Ice or Magnetic
Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps, I think it is no coincidence
that the
Gothenburg magnetic
excursion coincided with the beginning of the
Younger Dryas.
You’ll also
remember reading that all ice ages during the last 250,000
years – ALL of them -
began in less than 20 years, sometimes in less
than three years.
This new discovery ups the ante.
See entire article, entitled “Mini ice age took
hold of Europe in months”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427344.800-
mini-ice-age-took-hold-of-europe-in-months.html
Thanks to Peter Sanders for this link
