An interesting New York Times science article on new discoveries about a possible catastrophic meteor strike about 13,000 years ago: New Evidence of Meteor Bombardment.

At least once in Earth’s history, global warming ended quickly, and scientists have long wondered why.

Now researchers are reporting that the abrupt cooling — which took place about 12,900 years ago, just as the planet was emerging from an ice age — may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.

That could explain the extinction of mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and maybe even the first human inhabitants of the Americas, the scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The hypothesis has been regarded skeptically, but its advocates now report perhaps more convincing residue of impact: a thin layer of microscopic diamonds found in rocks across America and in Europe.