Episode #294: Drilling for Ashes - with Dr. Joanne Ballard

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Joanne Ballard, a Geologist and Biogeographist, discusses her research on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) and the implications of her findings. She shares insights from her lake core drilling to investigate evidence of biomass burning and paleofire records. The conversation also delves into her academic journey and ongoing explorations in the field of Quaternary studies.

Key takeaways

• 1Dr. Joanne Ballard: Geologist and member of the Comet Research Group focusing on paleofire records.
• 2Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH): A theory suggesting that a comet impact caused significant environmental changes during the Younger Dryas period.
• 3Lake cores: Samples drilled from lake beds to study sediment layers and infer historical climatic conditions.
• 4Research on late Pleistocene mammoths: Includes studies on bony malformations and extinction theories related to environmental changes.
• 5Blue Babe: A well-preserved bison carcass estimated to be 50,000 years old, significant for understanding ancient ecosystems.
• 6Acidification of landscapes: A potential factor in the extinction of species during the Pleistocene epoch.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

drilling for ashes with Dr Joanne Ballard you are listening to Brothers of the serpent podcast and welcome back ladies and gentlemen boys and girls age of the demons and monsters and serpents this is Brothers of the serpent podcast and we are coming to you not live this week from the 10 by 10 by 10 tangent cube of science where we are nestled amongst the dusty bones of an ancient seabed High Atop The Edwards Plateau we are joined uh by The Watcher this week he is here he is watching he's going to be helping us out with this show thanks for coming on buddy really appreciate it uh but we're also joined by a special guest Dr Joanne Ballard who is a geographer geologist she specializes in analyzing Lake sediment sediment cores paleo wildfires and she is a member of the Comet research group Dr Ballard thank you very much for coming on the show thank you you for having me so we met you at the cosmic Summit and you were on stage uh answering questions uh a little bit after was it uh Mark Young's Mark Young's presentation right sorry I was I was very distracted during the summit he was nervous I was nervous and I had my own presentation to do so I didn't get to see a lot of things and I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention but uh we're glad to have you on the show and uh why don't you can you tell us a little bit about your background and uh and how you got involved with the comet research group okay well the megaphone Extinction some 12 800 years ago and and just became very passionate about that what an interesting problem that is what...

Excerpt from Brothers of the Serpent, Jul 28, 2023. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.