The events precipitating the dramatic, millennial long climatic cooling known as the Younger Dryas, that occurred approximately 13,000 years ago reamin a mystery. Recent evidence suggests an extraterrestial impact on the Laurentide ice sheet may have provided the trigger for the massive influx of fresh glacial melt water posited to have flooded the North Atlantic and shut down the Thermohaline circulation that moderates climate in the northern hemisphere. The apparent absence of an easily identified impact crater has made the search for evidence of an impact, in the form of extraterrestial markers embedded in the Earth's sedimentary record.

Association of an impact with coincident reduction in the numbers of megafauna species and human population of North America has suggested a strategy for the search for evidence of the impact. If an impact is responsible for initiating the onset of the Younger Dryas, the ultimate disappearance of megafauna species and decline in human population, then the evidence should lie at the sedimentary boundary (YDB) separating the Younger Dryas from the preceding Bolling-Allerod at a depth corresonding to 12,900 years before present. Some of these evidential markers (magnetic grains and spherules, charcoal, and glass-like carbon) are relatively easy to extract and identify while others (nanodiamonds and fullerenes) require great care, expensive instrumentation and considerable training. Fortunately, the vessels (carbon spherules) containing the more challenging markers (carbon spherules) can be identified and extracted during the soil processing for magnetic spherules and charcoal. The research project also included an investigation of local paleo-lake depressions known to harbor impact markers and whose stratigraphy may reveal a clearer understanding of the processes that shaped the coastal topography during the Younger Dryas. The research will be carried out using a combination of Ground Penetrating RADAR (GPR) and sample coring to probe the surface.