The other big bang?

The theory about space rocks wiping out Ice Age species just got another boost: It turns out the first human inhabitants may have also been hit. Rare "nano-sized diamonds" that form under extremely hot fires are evidence that space rocks hit the North American continent about 13,000 years ago. Unfortunately, some pygmy mammoth (a smaller version of the woolly mammoth) and a group called the Clovis people happened to be in the line of fire. The galactic slam, plus "overhunting and climate change," created what one researcher called a "perfect storm" that wiped out the Ice Age population. The findings swelled searches on Yahoo! for the prehistoric "clovis people," so named because of artifacts first found in Clovis, New Mexico. For more on the mastodon hunters and the first Americans, check out this 2007 LiveScience article.