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Comet Impact Near Rachel Linked to Extinction

[Via Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk]

Nevada Comet Linked to Extinction

The Associated Press

A big comet that slammed into Nevada about 370 million years ago
generated 1,000-foot-high waves in what was then an ocean and was
likely the first in a series of comet strikes.

See rest at: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/comet1020/index.html

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October 20, 1997

Report Tells of Huge Nevada Comet

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- New evidence supports a theory that a comet
slammed into southern Nevada some 370 million years ago and may have
been the first of a series of strikes that triggered a mass extinction
of many forms of life, a government geologist said today.

The findings were detailed today as 6,000 members of the Geological
Society of America convened in Salt Lake City for their national
meeting.

Geologists Charles Sandberg of the U.S. Geological Survey, John Warme
of the Colorado School of Mines and Jared Morrow of the University of
Colorado studied evidence of the comet that hit roughly 130 miles
northwest of Las Vegas when the region was covered by ocean.

The comet was two-thirds of a mile wide and blasted a 120-mile-wide
crater on the sea floor, ripping apart a reef on what was then the
continental shelf and creating 1,000-foot-high waves that carried
pieces of reef as large as a half-mile-wide over much of southern
Nevada, Sandberg said.

Continued at...
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/1997/oct/20/102000747.html

[Another report in a Las Vegas newspaper (from the Salt Lake Tribune)
says the site of the comet impact was about 20 miles northwest of
Rachel, Nevada, which would be close to present-day Queen City Summit.
--gc]

Index: Rachel, Nevada