Scientists at the University of Chicago have found evidence that about 13 thousand years ago, a comet with a diameter of more than 100 kilometers fell to Earth. The space body broke into fragments that "bombarded" North and South America, the west of Europe and Asia. This caused an "asteroid winter", a mass extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna and abundant forest fires. This is reported in an article published in The Journal of Geology.
Traces of the disaster were found when analyzing ice cores extracted from Greenland glaciers. For example, an anomalous amount of platinum was found in the layer of ice formed in the Late Dryas (the final stage of the last glaciation), which indicates that this element was emitted into the Earth's atmosphere as a result of a catastrophic event. At the same time, an increase in the concentration of salt and dust occurred in the cores, which indicates an increase in winds due to global climate change.
Also, signs of global forest fires were found in the ice deposits. An increase in the content of biomass combustion products - ammonium, nitric oxide and acetate - was revealed. The area of vegetation destroyed by fire is estimated at 10 million square kilometers (9 percent of the entire biomass of the Earth). In particular, most of the pine forests burned out, in the place of which poplars grew.