Telegraph.co.uk reports on a new theory that hail from a comet’s tail caused a 1,000-year freeze:
Thousands of chunks of material from the comet would have rained down on Earth, each one releasing the energy of a one megaton nuclear bomb.
The impacts would have triggered wildfires covering whole continents, filling the atmosphere with smoke and soot and blotting out the Sun.
What caused a sudden cooling of up to 8C just as the Earth was warming at the end of the last ice age has puzzled scientists.
The change caused glaciers to re-advance and coincided with the rapid extinction of 35 families of North American mammals.
Evidence exists of an extraterrestrial event, such as an asteroid or comet impact.
Experts have found a ”black mat” of soot a few centimetres thick thought to be left by continental-scale wildfires.
Our neighbors in space: not always friendly.