Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO)


Print Feedback Export to File
2633067 
Journal Article 
Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerod-Younger Dryas boundary 
van Hoesel, A; Hoek, WimZ; Braadbaart, F; van Der Plicht, J; Pennock, GM; Drury, MR 
2012 
No 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN: 0027-8424
EISSN: 1091-6490 
109 
20 
7648-7653 
22547791 
WOS:000304369800026 
The controversial Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests that at the onset of the Younger Dryas an extraterrestrial impact over North America caused a global catastrophe. The main evidence for this impact-after the other markers proved to be neither reproducible nor consistent with an impact-is the alleged occurrence of several nanodiamond polymorphs, including the proposed presence of lonsdaleite, a shock polymorph of diamond. We examined the Usselo soil horizon at Geldrop-Aalsterhut (The Netherlands), which formed during the Allerod/Early Younger Dryas and would have captured such impact material. Our accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates of 14 individual charcoal particles are internally consistent and show that wildfires occurred well after the proposed impact. In addition we present evidence for the occurrence of cubic diamond in glass-like carbon. No lonsdaleite was found. The relation of the cubic nanodiamonds to glass-like carbon, which is produced during wildfires, suggests that these nanodiamonds might have formed after, rather than at the onset of, the Younger Dryas. Our analysis thus provides no support for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. 
radiocarbon dating; carbon spherules; wildfire temperature; electron microscopy