Top Ten Signs You Might Be A Geologist:

10. You have ever had to respond "yes" to the question, "What have you got

in here, rocks?"

9. You have ever taken a 15-passenger van over "roads" that were really

intended only for cattle

8. You have ever found yourself trying to explain to airport security that

a rock hammer isn't really a weapon

7. Your rock garden is located inside your house

6. You have ever hung a picture using a Brunton as a level, and your rock hammer as your hammer

5. Your collection of beer cans and/or bottles rivals the size of your rock collection

4. You consider a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the

last hundred thousand years

3. Your photos include people only for scale and you have more pictures of

your rock hammer and lens cap than of your family

2. You have ever been on a field trip that included scheduled stops at a

gravel pit and/or a liquor store

And the #1 sign you might be a geologist:

1. You have ever uttered the phrase "have you tried licking it" with no

sexual connotations involved.

http://groups.colgate.edu/geologicalsociety/Features/Geology

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Plates_tect2_en.svg/2000px-Plates_tect2_en.svg.png

Ice core data supports ancient space impact idea

By Simon RedfernReporter, BBC News

Greenland ice cores provide a window into the past

New data from Greenland ice cores suggest North America may have suffered a large cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago.

A layer of platinum is seen in ice of the same age as a known abrupt climate transition, US scientists report.

The climate flip has previously been linked to the demise of the North American “Clovis” people.

The data seem to back the idea that an impact tipped the climate into a colder phase, a point of current debate.

Rapid climate change occurred 12,900 years ago, and it is proposed that this is associated with the extinction of large mammals - such as the mammoth, widespread wildfires and rapid changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation.

All of these have previously been linked to a cosmic impact but the theory has been hotly disputed because there was a lack of clear evidence.

New platinum measurements were made on ice cores that allow conditions 13,000 years ago to be determined at a time resolution of better than five years, report Michail Petaev and colleagues from Harvard University. Their results are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A 100-fold spike in platinum concentration occurs in ice that is around 12,890 years old, at the same moment that rapid cooling of the climate is indicated from oxygen isotope measurements. This coincides with the start of a climatic period called the “Younger Dryas”.

The Younger Dryas started and finished abruptly, and is one of a number of shorter periods of climate change that appear to have occurred since the last glacial maximum of 20,000 years ago.

Each end of the Younger Dryas period may have involved very rapid changes in temperature as the climate system reached a tipping point, with suggestions that dramatic changes in temperature occurred over as short as timescale as a decade or so.

Asteroid apocalypse?