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The conjecture under consideration - the Mid Pleistocene Transition Impact (MPT Impact) hypothesis - has minimal support in the community at present, yet I feel justified in the expenditure of the considerable resources suggested here.
The hypotheses presents a scenario in which significant quantities of distal ejecta, in the form of a 1-10 meter thick sheet(blanket) of fine-grained sand, was deposited (blanketed) across a wide area for the North American continent in a singular event lasting less than an hour during MIS above 20. A common dating technique is OSL, but unfortunately limited to a date range which does not extend back to the expected era.
The resulting strata of sand - as a unit - can easily be discriminated from more generic fluvial and eolian deposit using a set of easily applied and identified criteria:
- homogeneous strata unit of 1 to 10 meters in thickness
- unconsolidated
- contact with underlying strata to be conformable and sharply defined
- blanket will drape over hosting terrain up-slope/ down-slope while maintaining strata thickness
- mottled, laminated or gnarly presentation in vertical and horizontal cross section, suggesting turbid deposit environment
- no indications of stratified horizons within the unit (single deposition sequence accepted)
- exception to above when multiple units of otherwise-qualified strata exists in contact with each other, generating a horizon
- no indications of aqueous deposition, i.e. shells, therefore deductively considered eolian
- virtually no clay lenses present
- incongruous course skew seen in unit
- grain size (as a unit) variable from exceedingly fine sand up to small gravels
- no variation in heavy metal suite across strata
- OSL and C4 dating fails to yield a date, suggesting it is too old to be measured by those tools
Suggested sitings for this strata include:
- sourced from within the rim of a Carolina bay structure, or within a field of these structures
- Costal margins, where a truncated bay will be interpreted as a parabolic dune
- Surficial deposits may represent re-worked surfaces. We encourage sampling of rims at depths of 5 meters or more.
Due to the proposed geographic extent of this strata, I recognize it may well be considered "common" within your experience; yet enigmatic nonetheless in context, raising questions about the true depositional method.
Please consider the profile offered above, and should you have access to experimental datum derived from previous research which identified depositional strata meeting these criteria, I implore you to consider testing the hypothesis . In addition, should you have knowledge of , and access to, sites which exhibit these criteria, I invite you to assist me in obtaining samples across the vertical and extent of the unit.
I continue to accept contributions for the ongoing data gathering and analysis efforts. If you are intrigued by this work, please make a donation using PayPal link:
Michael Davias
203-705-9272
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