Destiny: Dr. Joanne Ballard, Earth Impact, 12,000+ years ago and the Megafauna Extinction
Earth Ancients10 Juli 2024

Destiny: Dr. Joanne Ballard, Earth Impact, 12,000+ years ago and the Megafauna Extinction

Dr. Joanne Ballard
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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John Anthony West: Pre-Dynastic Egypt and the Sphinx

John Anthony West: Pre-Dynastic Egypt and the Sphinx

This is Earth Ancient Premier podcast, the first in a series of weekly programs. Our first program features John Anthony West. John will highlight his work following the amazing redating of the Sphinx.Who is John Anthony West? Dr. Robert Schoch was the Geologist who examined the Egyptian Sphinx on the Giza Plateau, and later redated the rock body of the sculpture to a significantly older period. The inspiration and driving force behind the discovery was John Anthony West. West had studies the Sphinx, its enclosure and many of the regions buildings, and was convinced that the world's largest man-made sculpture was from an earlier pre-dynastic people. He was the driving force behind Schoch's work and others.In 1993 his work with Robert M. Schoch, a geologist and associate professor of natural science at the College of General Studies at Boston University was presented by Charlton Heston in a NBC special called “The Mystery of the Sphinx” that won West an News & Documentary Emmy Award for Best Research and a nomination for Best Documentary. The documentary contends that the main type of weathering evident on the Great Sphinx (pictured) and surrounding enclosure walls could only have been caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall during the time period from 10,000 to 5000 BCE and was carved out of limestone bedrock by an ancient advanced culture (such as the Heavy Neolithic Qaraoun culture).This challenged the conventional dating of the carving of the statue circa 2500 BCE. West suggested that the Sphinx may be over twice as old as originally determined, whereas Schoch made a more conservative determination of between 5000 and 7000 BCE.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.

8 Mars 20141h 12min

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