Science Central

January Science Café

What Killed The Mammoths?

Date: Sat, January 28, 2012

Time: 10 am - 12 noon

Location: Los Poblanos Inn & Cultural Center
4803 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, Albuquerque

As the last ice age was waning, North America looked very different than it does now. It was sparsely populated by Clovis people, who used their namesake stone spear points to hunt giant mammals. The continent was teeming with beasts, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, saber-tooth cats, giant beavers, and camels. In the geological blink of an eye, the climate changed. These animals went extinct, and the Clovis culture was forever altered.

Come to KNME's January Science Café, view a clip of NOVA: The Last Extinction and later join in a discussion with Dr. Mark Boslough of Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Boslough will provide arguments against the controversial hypothesis that a broken comet exploded over the large North American ice sheet, setting off an unlikely chain reaction of environmental catastrophes. Skeptic and impact expert, Mark Boslough, will also discuss why he has embraced a recent notion that this was only one of many abrupt climate change events in recent Earth history and why we are still vulnerable to such changes.