Destiny: Dr. Joanne Ballard, Earth Impact, 12,000+ years ago and the Megafauna Extinction
Earth Ancients
Cliff Dunning
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2024
⏱️ 74 minutes
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Summary
Joanne has a PhD in Geography from the University of Tennessee with specializations in Biogeography and Quaternary Environments, advised by Dr Sally Horn, palynologist. She has a M.S. in Geology from the University of Cincinnati, studying under glaciologist Dr. Thomas Lowell. She has also worked as an Archaeologist for the Tennessee Valley Authority as a Database Analyst and Mapping expert. In addition, Joanne worked for the US Census Bureau as an Analyst and Cartographic Technician, giving technical support, troubleshooting, and training personnel on addressing projects. Currently, Joanne is serving as a Naturalist at a local museum, and working with Czech colleagues on YDB research led by Dr. Evzen Stuchlik at the Czech Academy of the Sciences. Joanne is a catastrophist, and collaborates with the Comet Research Group.
Joanne has been intrigued with the causation for the megafauna extinction since the 1990s. She met Rick Firestone at the Mammoth Conference in 2005 at Hot Springs, SD. When he and others presented their hypothesis on a bolide strike as causation for the Younger Dryas onset (Firestone et al. 2007), she wanted to look for evidence. Lake mud contains various proxies that help us gain insights into past environments, such as charcoal (wildfires), pollen and macrofossils (vegetation), diatoms, chironomids (climate) and chemistry--isotopes and elements. Lake mud is considered less disturbed (such as by roots, earthworms, freeze/thaw) than terrestrial sediment or soil. At UC, she and her team drilled through the ice to collect cores from four lakes near Flint, Michigan, two of which (Slack and Swift Lakes) are adjacent to the Gainey archaeological site mentioned by Firestone et al. (2007). At UT, she studied lake sediments from sites in the southeastern USA. She discovered a new proxy for wildfires--possibly catastrophic wildfires--which are siliceous aggregates. These form in wood ash. After a tree burns to ash, the silica phytoliths that were part of the structure of the tree are deposited with the wood ash. When that highly alkaline ash gets wet, it causes the phytoliths to dissolve, and the silica gel percolates down through the ash and then hardens up around silt or other particles in the sediment. Five of six lakes sampled across eastern North America showed siliceous aggregates around the time of the onset of the Younger Dryas, suggesting widespread, catastrophic wildfires. However, more work needs to be done to support this interpretation.
Joanne has also researched Usselo Horizon sites (typically YDB-age black mats) in The Netherlands and Belgium to understand the events that triggered the onset of the Younger Dryas (12,900 - 11,600 BP). At four Usselo horizon sites across the NL and BE, she found fused quartz, soot, charcoal, melt glass and sponge spicules.See her PPT presentation "Usselo Horizon Presentation" here:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joanne-Ballard/research
Did humans tame woolly mammoths? See the discussion here with 821 postshttps://www.researchgate.net/topicshttps://www.researchgate.net/post/Did-humans-tame-woolly-mammoths-or-other-megafauna
Joanne's dissertation can be accessed and downloaded for free here:https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3492/Evidence of Late Quaternary Fires from Charcoal and Siliceous Aggregates in Lake Sediments in the Eastern U.S.A.
Her MS thesis can be accessed for free here: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/etd/r/1501/10?clear=10&p10_accession_num=ucin1250268463A Lateglacial Paleofire Record for East-central Michigan
Rick Firestone's paper:https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0706977104 Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling-- Sent with Tuta; enjoy secure & ad-free emails: https://tuta.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, he's cute. Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling. He's hugging his pillow like a sloth on a branch. |
| 0:10.0 | He couldn't sleep before. Now listen to him. Sounds like an elephant with a chest infection. |
| 0:15.0 | Well, they call him a dreamer. And now they're right. |
| 0:19.0 | All aboard, Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling. |
| 0:23.0 | Find all the comfort you need in the quiet lounge. |
| 0:26.0 | Piando Ferries, there is another way. Welcome to Destiny. Now he's your host, Cliff Dunning. |
| 0:47.0 | Hey, how are you? |
| 0:51.0 | Come on in and have a chair. Hope you're doing well today. You know, we had a number of people speaking on the younger dryas event. |
| 1:02.5 | Randall Carlson spoke about it when we had him on recently, |
| 1:05.4 | as well as a couple of other of the scientists |
| 1:08.3 | that were speaking at the Cosmic Summit. |
| 1:11.3 | By the way, it was a tremendous success. |
| 1:13.4 | The Summit was, I think they sold out. |
| 1:16.4 | And for those of you who had a chance to see it |
| 1:18.7 | on the streaming platform, I think you got a good presentation all I think really it was three days |
| 1:28.4 | because it was Saturday Sunday and then there was some spots with Randall Carlson and a couple of other people |
| 1:35.0 | that I think even the producer George Leonard had a program where he had a panel |
| 1:40.4 | discussion that you were able to sit in on if you wanted to. |
| 1:45.8 | So for the hundred bucks that you paid, that was a really great price and overall the summit, I mean I heard great things from it. I sent |
| 1:55.4 | Monica Arnet so thank you Monica she attended the event said it was excellent I'm going to try to get out there to North Carolina next year |
| 2:05.7 | for the Cosmic Summit. |
| 2:07.6 | And I would like to definitely be a sponsor if we can, |
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