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History Channel Documentary to Feature UC Anthropologist and Students Tuesday Night

   Field research being conducted by UC anthropologist Ken Tankersley and his students will be highlighted in prime time on May 5 on The History Channel cable network.

Anthropology professor Ken Tankersley and a film crew working on a documentary.

The documentary series “How the Earth was Made” captures Tankersley and his students as they work in Sheriden Cave in Ohio’s Wyandot County.

This episode of the series is titled “Asteroids,” and what Tankersley and his students found in the cave points to an ancient event involving the catastrophic impact of an asteroid or comet. Evidence seen in the strata in the cave points to a cataclysmic event about 12,900 years ago – a time frame consistent with the disappearance of numerous animal species and the Clovis people, among the first human inhabitants of North America.

The episode airs at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5, and will repeat four hours later at midnight on Wednesday, May 6.

Here’s the episode synopsis from The History Channel:

These giant mountain-sized boulders from space have wrought death and destruction throughout the millennia but until recently geologists could find no evidence that they had actually struck the earth. Follow the remarkable detective story that begins at Meteor Crater in Arizona as mining engineers desperately try to unearth the billion dollar iron boulder they thought was lying there. It's a detective story that also uncovers immense riches; the world's biggest nickel deposit in Sudbury, Canada, vast oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and a gold mine in South Africa--all the result of asteroid impacts. Evidence is also unearthed of violent impacts that decimated some of the first people to live in America. What clues do asteroids, and their smaller cousins, meteorites, hold in the formation of the early Earth and perhaps life itself?

Anthropology students working inside of Sheriden Cave.

The episode with Tankersley and his students can also be viewed in its entirety online. To access the episode, go to this History Channel Web page and then click on the tab that says “Full Episodes.” The “Asteroids” episode is the second video listed, and the segment of the episode featuring Tankersley and his students can be seen in Part 4.