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Marc Defant's switch to YDIH co-author

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Several years ago, Marc Defant, a respected academic geologist, appeared on a Joe Rogan show with Michael Shermer (not a scientist, but a leading skeptic and debunker of what he thinks is pseudoscience) together to attempt to debunk Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson and the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH). Malcolm LeCompte, also a respected academic geologist who has collaborated on many pro-YDIH papers, was also present to add some scientific balance. Graham, Randall and Malcolm held their ground. Earlier this year, Marc Defant switched sides and co-authored a pro-YDIH paper with other members of the Comet Research Group. In podcasts , he describes the evidence for the YD impact hypothesis as being overwhelming. I agree. Any fair-minded scientist who reads the relevent papers carefully should be able to see this. The combination of nanodiamonds, impact-like microspherules, platinum and high-temperature melts within a boundary layer with apparently synchronous age across half ...
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What has happened since Holiiday et al.'s alleged refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis in mid-2023?

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Holliday et al's alleged refutation of the Younger Dryas Impacy Hypothesis (YDIH) in mid-2023 caused real problems for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, even though their apparent refutation was mostly a load of old nonsense. Wikipedia's editors loved it (of course - they were always baised against the hypothesis) and their bias has fed through to many AI models that prioritze Wikipedia's articles, despite the wiki's well documented biases and problems when dealing with contraversial issues. With their publication, opponents of the hypothesis were able to claim it had been comprehensively refuted, leading journal editors to retract and block several pro-YDIH papers. To get their data into the public domain, many pro-YDIH scientists have resorted to publication in their own peer-reviewed journal, Airbursts and Cratering Impacts. This is not a healthy situation, but it's better than no publication at all.  Of course, if Holiday are correct and the YDIH is bogus, th...
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The poor rhetoric of YDIH citics (updated May 2026)

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Jim powell's new paper  documents the poor rhetoric of Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) critics. Their approach is often pseduoskeptical. In many other cases their approach either lacks scientific rigour or is possibly fraudulent. Here I summarize the poor rhetoric of most of the key critical YDIH papers. ----------------------------------------------- 1. Pinter and Ishman “Impacts, mega-tsunami, and other extraordinary claims.” GSA Today 18 (2008). doi: 10.1130/GSAT01801GW.1. As shown by Powell , this initial rebuttal of Firestone et al. (2007), in wich the YDIH is presented for the first time, contains no new field data and is full of anti-science rhetoric. 2.  Surovell et al. “An Independent Evaluation of the Younger Dryas Extraterrestrial Impact Hypothesis.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 18155–58 (2009). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0907857106. Surrovell et al. (with Holliday and Claeys as co-authors) sampled the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) at 7 ...
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How the lunar-solar calendar at Gobekli Tepe was discovered

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Three people were involved in the discovery of the lunar-solar calendar at Gobekli Tepe. Dr John Gordon, myself, and Claire Murdoch. John, a psychiatrist at the Turning Winds institute in Montana, USA, emailed me about how the top row of v-symbols on Pillar 43, shown above, likely represents a lunar cycle. I immediately saw that he was probably correct, as I had already read about a similar lunar tally-count in Alexander Marshack's work from the 1970s. However, I disagreed with his interpretation of the remainder of the calendar symbols. I soon worked out that the 11 little boxes likely meant "repeat the above count" and the 10 v-symbols in the bottom row were extra (epagomenal) days. Together, these symbols sum to 364 days. I was sure this had to be the correct interpretation, although I struggled to find a convincing way to complete the solar calendar count of 365 days. Surely, there had to be another v-symbol in the count? I described this interpretation to Claire Murd...
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New paper that rebuts Holliday et al.'s (2023) nonsense

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Holliday et al. (2023): Systematic Misrepresentations of Younger Dryas Impact Evidence Undermine the Reliability of their Critique – ScienceOpen Holliday et al. (2023) present a “comprehensive refutation” of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), but in doing so make numerous incorrect or misleading statements about the studies they critique. Collectively, these mischaracterizations distort the scientific record and compromise the reliability of the reviewers’ assessment. In multiple cases, their review omits key caveats, exaggerates alleged weaknesses, or presents prior YDIH studies out of context, giving readers an inaccurate impression of the claims, methods, and evidentiary strength of the original work. For clarity and brevity, we examine representative examples drawn from six influential YDIH publications discussed by Holliday et al.: Firestone et al. (2007), LeCompte et al. (2012), Kennett et al. (2015), Moore et al. (2017), Wolbach et al. (2018), and Moore et al. (2019), a...
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Jim Powell creates new website dedicated to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

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Jim Powell, Emeritus Professor of Geology, has created a new website dedicated to informing the public about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. Sites like Wikipedia, which feed into AI models like ChatGPT and Grok, cannot be trusted to accurately reflect the science. This is the actual scientific situation. The comet research group and other research groups have amassed a huge body of data across multiple impact proxies at over 60 Younger Dryas boundary sites. The overwhelmingly best explanation for this preponderance of reproducable data is that a major cosmic impact occured around 10,875 BCE that could have dramatically affected the environemnt, climate, people and megafauna across several continents. Given the range of sites found so far, the YD boundary layer, logically, must occur across a wide area - so the 60 sites found so far must sample only a tiny fraction of the YDB layer that actually exists. Critics, like Holliday et al., apparently prefer a different explanation for t...
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Update: Early Developments in Astronomy, Arithmetic and Proto-writing at Göbekli Tepe

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The following paper will be submitted to the meeting, "Second MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDY DAYS geo-archaeological on Mediterranean megalithism" (Palermo, Sicily, November, 2025). See the video on Youtube   for the actual presentation at the conference Early Developments in Astronomy, Arithmetic and Proto-Writing at Göbekli Tepe Martin B. Sweatman School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Abstract Göbekli Tepe, a megalithic site in southern Anatolia, consists of many sub-circular enclosures formed by megalithic T-shaped pillars and a large number of other rectangular buildings. The pillars of this very early settlement, some standing over 5 m tall, are adorned with a complex system of symbols, including animal symbols and other geometric symbols. It is believed to date to ~ 9,500 BCE, although an older origin date within the Epi-palaeolithic period is likely. Recent analyses of Göbekli Tepe’s iconography suggest that its builders possessed conceptual...
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Chris Moore of the Comet Research Group rebuts Boslough's pseudoskepticism (updated May 2026)

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Recently, Mark Boslough wrote yet another scathing piece about the Comet Research Group and the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) in the Skeptical Enquirer (he's a long time member of their college).  The Problem with Inadequately Reviewed Fringe Science | Skeptical Inquirer In it, he infers the YDIH is is worse than pseudoscience; he regards it as a massive fraud, similar to Piltdown Man x 100. But the YDIH is actually a complex scientific debate that has raged for nearly 20 years and has pushed the boundaries of the science of airburst impacts. Ironically, (given the volume's title - see above), Boslough doesn't address any of these emerging scientific issues. Instead, he tackles the people involved. As aleady pointed out by James Powell in his "Premature Rejection" and "Pillars of Salt" articles, Peer review and the pillar of salt: a case study - James Lawrence Powell, 2023 Premature rejection in science: The case of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypo...
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The Younger Dryas black mat extends to the Eastern Baltics and Russia

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Read all about this at the Cosmic Tusk It might be easier to document where the YD black mat isn't?
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The first Younger Dryas impact surface feature identified?

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In a new paper, Fitzenreiter et al. (2025) may have just located the first known surface impact feature of the Younger Dryas impact. It's near Perkins, Louisiana. The feature is a surface depression which fills with water on a seasonal basis, i.e. a seasonal lake. Clearly, it's not a crater. But that's ok, as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests the event was caused by a multitude of comet fragments and not necessarily by a single large and dense impactor. So the YDIH doesn't need craters, although there may well be some associated with it. The surface feature is not very large. It's suggested to have been caused by a low altitude airburst, or touch-down airburst, that provided sufficient heat and force to scar the landscape below without forming a traditional crater. Such events are thought to be more common than crater-forming impacts, but evidence for them is harder to find (due to the lack of an obvious crater). While the paper details copious geochemic...
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New paper submitted: Origin of some of the ancient Greek constellations via analysis of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe

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Origin of some of the ancient Greek constellations via analysis of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe  Martin B. Sweatman and Dimitrios Gerogiorgis School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, The King's Buildings, Sanderson Building, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JL, United Kingdom. email: martin.sweatman@ed.ac.uk   key words: Greek constellations, Göbekli Tepe, Pillar 43   ABSTRACT We re-evaluate an astronomical interpretation of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey. Our analysis supports earlier conclusions that at least some of the animal symbols on this pillar almost certainly represent constellations related to those of the ancient Greeks. Presumably, the Greeks, Mesopotamians and other Neolithic, Bronze and Iron-age cultures towards the eastern end of the Mediterranean region were influenced in their choice of constellations and symbols by this pre-existing knowledge.   1.       Introduction This work investig...
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