Re: Suspicious impact craters and iridium layers?

[Tommy Tyrberg <tommy.tyrberg@norrkoping.mail.telia.com>]

<10,000 years is a pretty short time when it comes to explaining extinction.
<Neanderthals took maybe 65,000 years to go extinct.   It had to do with
<unfavorable competitive conditions relative to homo sapiens, and a slightly
<lower rate of reproduction, over time.

I would say 15,000 years is more like it. The first H. sapiens show up in 
Europe between 40 and 50 KA BP and the last neanderthalers are gone by ca 
30 KA BP (perhaps a little later in the Iberian Peninsula). It is true that 
both forms occur in the Middle East from ca 100 KA BP, but there is little 
to suggest that the sapients were competitively superior at that time. 
Rather it seems that the Neanderthalers expand during colder intervals and 
the sapients during warmer phases. As a matter of fact it seems that 
coexistence in any particular area was fairly short, interdigitation of 
Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic layers is quite rare.

Tommy Tyrberg