Scientists hypothesized that the end of a certain geological period came about when a cataclysmic meteor impact near the equator caused debris to fly up into the atmosphere, where it was scattered by winds, blocking out the sunlight and abruptly killing off many species. In European rock layers, the fossil record of the boundary layer that marks the end of the period supports this picture of rapid, mass extinction of life. But the boundary layer in the Antarctic is much thicker, so that it appears that the extinction process there lasted a much longer time, contrary to what the hypothesis would have predicted. Which one of the following, if true, resolves the apparent discrepancy noted above? ['It was recently discovered that Europe accumulated sediment at a slower rate than did the Antarctic region, so that a layer of sediment of a given thickness represents a longer period of time in Europe than it does in the Antarctic.', 'Although scientists have traditionally used the last appearance of creatures called ammonites to define the boundary layer, they recently found ammonites 20 meters above the previously identified boundary layer in the Antarctic.', 'The findings in Europe agree with data about the boundary layer from all other mid-latitude sites.', 'The rock layers in the Antarctic were examined many years after the rock layers in Europe.']