The Younger Dryas Impact Evidence Has Reached Africa

Dr. Francis Thackeray of South Africa joins George Howard on the Cosmic Tusk with new evidence extending the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to a continent that has never contributed direct data before. George opens by addressing the pseudo smear directly, then walks through Thackeray's distinguished background: Cape Town, Yale, and decades directing South African research institutions.

At Wonderkrater, a peat deposit in Limpopo Province, Thackeray and paleobotanist Louis Scott found a platinum spike recalibrated to 12,809 years, matching the signature from eleven North American sites and joining a growing global list. Iridium and osmium accompanied it, alongside megafauna extinctions and stone tool changes at the same boundary.

The headline finding is the Thackeray syllogism, developed in response to a study connecting a Greenland sulfate spike to the Younger Dryas onset roughly 45 years before the platinum signature. Thackeray questions that dating precision and proposes instead that the impact triggered the volcanism directly, possibly within a day, pointing to the Hiawatha Glacier crater's suspiciously fresh rim as supporting evidence.

The conversation also covers the late oceanographer Wallace Broecker, once a fierce critic who reversed his position after seeing the platinum data, and the peer review battle behind getting this research published.

**CHAPTERS**

00:10 Introduction and the pseudo smear

01:04 Age six: micrometeorites and the start of a career

04:57 Career background

08:12 Introducing Wonderkrater

11:29 The 2019 platinum prediction

34:48 Comparing to North American sites

43:53 The spike confirmed at 12,809 years