According to the Vancouver Sun, scientists have discovered Nano-diamonds, a layer of microscopic diamonds at Santa Rosa Island in California, U.S.A. They claim these microscopic diamonds constitute the strongest evidence for a controversial theory explaining the extinction of Ice Age mammals. The theory proposes that a collision with a comet that around the area of northern Canada around thirteen thousand years ago started a period of cold atmosphere that lasted for a thousand years.

The discovery of the microscopic diamonds places one of the centers of collision in the Hudson Bay area in North America.

Evidence for this theory was found in previous years in the form of displaced or charred materials. However, the discovery of the nano-diamonds has offered a significant confirmation. Previous theories of extinction attributed the phenomena to overhunting by paleo-Indians.

The Vancouver Sun states that the current study is to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors will argue that since nano-diamonds have been found only in one other site – the location of the Chicxulub meteorite collision, which is theorized to have created the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, the collision in Canada and the U.S.A. is comparable.