Retraction: Shocked quartz at the Younger Dryas onset (12.8 ka) supports cosmic airbursts/impacts contributing to North American megafaunal extinctions and collapse of the Clovis technocomplex

The shocked-quartz retraction notice, in the editors' own words

what the source states

The PLOS One Editors retracted the article on 2026-02-11 after expert consultation, citing: an age model that did not include all available published radiocarbon samples, with some dates untraceable to source studies and included ages ranging "centuries before and after the Younger Dryas onset"; and incomplete core sampling that precludes ruling out comparable proxy spikes at other depths, prevents any background comparison, and — absent reported age models — leaves open that the claimed spike reflects sedimentation-rate change rather than an event. Eight authors disagreed with the retraction; the rest did not respond or could not be reached.

what we infer

The second 2026 editorial action, with a defect list matching the chronology and sampling critiques the independent literature had been making since 2009 — the same failure modes, a decade later, in the hypothesis's newest flagship evidence. As with Baffin Bay: error and method, not fabrication.

limitations

• The underlying claim (shock-metamorphosed quartz at the boundary) could in principle be re-established by properly sampled, properly dated future work.