Video: How geologists identify natural catastrophes in the past

This program focuses on the search for discovering the cause of the “Little Ice Age” in Europe, which triggered massive famines and plagues. They zeroed in on an enormous eruption of a volcano in Indonesia.

After this film was produced, some of the team members traveled to southern Mexico to look for the same evidence to explain the abandonment of Teotihuacan and a short-term collapse of Maya civilization. They were surprised to find a series of major volcanic eruptions in Mesoamerica, plus a layer of iridium deposits associated with a massive comet impact off the coast of Florida.

What I did 11 years ago was closely analyze the maps, newly available from NOAA and USGS, of the ocean floor and coasts of Florida and Georgia to precisely determine where the comet struck and how far “extinction level” damage extended, My findings will be discussed in Part Nine of this series. Part Eight will generally describe the effects on eastern North America of the two “Little Ice Ages” which were associated with volcanic activity.