[meteorite-list] UNM geology PhD student Mel blogs lucidly re AMQUA YDB debate Aug 14 -- Thomas W. Stafford, Jr 2009 talk on Hall's Cave strata at YDB, and other treats: Rich Murray 2010.08.19

From: Rich Murray <rmforall_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:23:05 -0600
Message-ID: <4BA4B5A35BFC44DFAE707C5F18E127BA_at_ownerPC>

UNM geology PhD student Mel blogs lucidly re AMQUA YDB debate Aug 14 --
Thomas W. Stafford, Jr 2009 talk on Hall's Cave strata at YDB, and other
treats: Rich Murray 2010.08.19
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.htm
Thursday, August 19, 2010
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http://rmforall.blogspot.com/

2010.08.18 Wed 5:15 PM MST

Mel has left a new comment on your post "Dennis Cox sees both holocene
impacts and ancient ...":

Hi Rich,

Got your comments on my blog post, thanks for the comments and information.
As far as using anything from my blog on other sites, so long as it is not
misrepresented, I'm fine with it.
I ask that if you do use anything, let me know.
Thanks!

Mel

http://phd-beginning2end.blogspot.com/2010/08/amqua-2010.html

PhD in the Land of Enchantment

"Saturday afternoon there was a special set of talks on the highly
controversial Younger Dryas Boundry (YDB) impact hypothesis. The Younger
Dryas is a period of time in the late Pleistocene that represents a very
quick cooling trend right before the warming into the Pleistocene. The YDB
impact hypothesis states that some kind of extraterrestrial impact caused
the Younger Dryas and precipitated the environmental and biotic changes at
that time. Very few people actually think this hypothesis holds any water:
there are some serious issues with reproducibility of results that support
the hypothesis, and the timing of biotic events don't quite match up. There
are a lot of problems with the hypothesis, so much so that I could spend an
entire blog post on the subject. The symposium on the meeting was really
interesting, and it makes me want to go back to the original literature and
read more about it. These kinds of controversies can get kind of messy, with
personal attacks from one scientist on another. One unfortunate thing is
that some of the scientists who have presented evidence against the YDB
impact hypothesis, and who I tend to agree with, are kind of arrogant. So
while I agree with much of their work, I think they need to rethink what
they say and their attitude."
_______________________________________________



"Sediments at or within 10 cm of this contact contain the local extinction
of 4 species of bats, the local extinction of the prairie dog (Cynomys sp.)
and perhaps other burrowing mammals in response to decrease in soil
thickness, and the uppermost occurrence of 6 late Pleistocene megafaunal
taxa that, although rare in the cave, do not extend younger than 12.9 ka."

http://cosmictusk.com/page/12

[ Hall's Cave
30.135347 -99.537902 ]

[ George A. Howard reports ]

[2009] AGU Fall Meeting Re-Cap Part Two: Tom Stafford's Texas Hill Country
Paleo site littered with evidence at start of Younger Dryas


[ Thomas W. Stafford Jr. TWSTAFFORD at stafford-research.com
thomasws at earthlink.net
Stafford Research, Inc., 200 Acadia Avenue,
Lafayette, CO 80026, USA
Tel.: 1 720 982 9147.
http://biology.mcgill.ca/grad/emilie/articles/Saulnier-Talbot_2009.pdf
11 pages ]

Tom Stafford was an expert among experts at the Fall Meeting.
I became aware of Tom Stafford when Redefining the Age of Clovis:
Implications for the Peopling of America was published in Science in 2007.
He is the Former Director of the Laboratory of AMS Radicarbon Research at
University of Colorado.
And for more than decade he has been President of Stafford Research
Laboratories -- the nation?s top private dating laboratory.
He is to be taken seriously when, among other things, he tells you how old
something is.
I was looking forward to his presentation more than any other at the Fall
Meeting.
I was not disappointed.

Tom -- who has never previously published with the YD team -- laid out a
very, very, tight and narrow layer of evidence supporting the purported
event
In short, 151 centimeters below the surface at the pefectly stratified Hall?s
Cave Paleo site in Texas was a 1 to 2 cm layer of dirt that was host to
trillions of nanodiamonds and high levels of soot known as aciniform.
Not above -- not below.

Background article on Texas Hill Cave studies:
The sediments in Hall?s Cave were deposited fairly continuously over at
least the last 17,000 years.
The cave contains the best sequence of latest Pleistocene through Holocene
sediments and bone of any Texas cave, and it certainly ranks as one of the
excellent sequences in the United States.
The temporal control is unrivaled with over 100 radiocarbon determinations
from the sequence (Stafford and Toomey, in prep)
Vertebrate Paleontology of Texas Caves by Rickard S. Toomey, III

Continue reading AGU Fall Meeting Re-Cap Part Two: Tom Stafford?s Texas
Hill Country Paleo site littered with ET evidence at start of Younger Dryas

http://cosmictusk.com/tom-stafford-texas-hill-country-paleo-site-littered-with-evidence-at-the-younger-dryas#more-482

Here was Tom Stafford?s first slide:

Geology of Hall?s Cave, Texas.

Thickly stratified ? 3.7 meters.
Minimal Bioturbation
Well Dated ? 161 AMS C14 dates ; 0 to 18,240 RC YR
Continuous Stratigraphy acorss 11 RC YR
One Depositional Process ? Sheet Wash
Multiple Paleo Environmental Proxies
u-Vertabretes, Megafauna, C, N, Sr-Isotopes
Small Catchment Area ? ~2 acres (o.8 HA)

Tom then gave several slides and narrative regarding the quality of the
sampling at Halls Cave, and the nature of samples taken along the Younger
Dryas period, showing clear peaks of markers overlaid on an actual photos of
the stratified cave sediment wall.
According to Tom, each centimeter you go down you can click off fifty years
(at that level).

Tom said that the nanodiamond and aciniform evidence is unequivocally
associated with the beginning of the Younger Dryas.
He also pointed out that at Hall?s Cave, no more Megafauna is found above
the very layer identified by the nanodiamonds.

He went to on to share -- in a slightly astonished manner -- the nature of
the stranger nanodiamonds at Hall?s Cave.
He said that Hex-Diamonds (those pesky ones that only come from space), the
N-Diamonds and P-Diamonds were all found and photographed at Hall's Cave.
He showed one photo of a perfect diamond sphere ?lattice? made up of 3000
?twin? diamonds of i-carbon.
Pretty weird stuff to find in a Texas Hill Country cave.
Pretty weird stuff.

He concluded with the following slides:

SLIDE: CONCLUSIONS

Peaks in nanodiamonds and aciniform carbon occur at 151-153 centimeters.
Upper boundary is sharp base is gradual.
Upper one half of the diamond bearing interval dates11,155 +/- 25 RC years,
(13-132-12,958CAP BP) on Humic Acids
Humic Acids Date~100 RC older than bone Therrfore ?ET? Horizon Dates
~11,o055 Radio Carbon years 13,060-12, 905 CAL BP.
A DISTINCT CHRONOGRAPHIC STRATUM IS PRESENT AND
DATES TO THE BEGGING OF THE YOUNGER DRYAS.

FUTURE EXPERIMENTS
Use 1-2 mm sample thickness to locate et proxies with greatest precision
C14 date each 2mm thick interval
Sample 10 cm above 10 cm below horizon
Analyze for ET proxies at 25 intervals betwen 0 and 18 KA over cave?s 3.7
meter thickness.
Perform similar precision sampling, C14 dating, and other proxy anlysis at
otehr sites.

My take: Why on earth would this man suddenly join the YD Team at AGU -- out
of nowhere and not previously published with them -- unless he had truly
found something extraordinary in the course of his own work -- and somewhat
contrary to his own experience!?
The modern YDB hypothesis (non-Platonic) is hardly ten years old.
Despite intermittent attention it has suffered near ceaseless rock-throwing,
drive-by commentary and half-baked popular and professional press articles
[links to come].

At this point -- even if it is a ?cool theory? -- you don?t jump up for the
fun and attention.

Nope.
Tom Stafford did the right thing by helping out someone else?s investigation
by using the best tools on his best site.
Even better, what he he found was very specifically predicted by the YDB
team.
That the way it is supposed to work -- and it tells us something.
[ end of comments by George Howard ]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AGUFMPP33B..08S

Testing Younger Dryas ET Impact (YDB) Evidence at Hall?s Cave, Texas
AU: Stafford, T W
EM: TWSTAFFORD at stafford-research.com
AF: Stafford Research, Inc., Lafayette, CO, United States
AU: Lundelius, E
EM: erniel at mail.utexas.edu
AF: Dept. of Geological Sciences, Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX, United States
AU: Kennett, J
EM: kennett at geol.ucsb.edu
AF: Dept. of Earth Science & Marine Science Institute, Univ. of California,
Santa Barbara, CA, United States
AU: Kennett, D J
EM: dkennett at uoregon.edu
AF: Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, OR, United States
AU: West, A
EM: allen7633 at aol.com
AF: GeoScience Consulting, Dewey, AZ, United States
AU: Wolbach, W S
EM: wwolbach at condor.depaul.edu
AF: Dept. of Chemistry, DePaul Univ., Chicago, IL, United States
AB: Hall?s Cave, Kerrville County Texas, 167 km WSW of Austin, provides a
unique opportunity for testing the presence of a chronostratigraphic sratum
(YDB layer) containing rare and exotic proxies, including nanodiamonds,
aciniform soot, and magnetic spherules, the origins of which remain
controversial, but possibly derive from a cosmic impact ~12,900 CAL BP.
The karst-collapse cave in Cretaceous limestone on the Edwards Plateau
contains ? 3.7 m of stratified clays grading to clayey silts recording
continuous deposition from 16 ka RC yr to present.
The cave?s small catchment area and mode of deposition were constant, and
the stratigraphy is well dated based on 162 AMS 14C dates from individual
vertebrate fossils, snails, charcoal, and sediment chemical fractions.
The cave sequence contains an abundant small animal vertebrate fossil
record, exhibiting biostratigraphic changes, and the timing of the late
Pleistocene megafaunal extinction is consistent with that elsewhere in North
America.
At 151 cm below datum is the extremely sharp, smooth contact separating
lower, dusky red (2.5YR3/2) clays below from overlying dark reddish brown
(5YR3/3) clays (forming a 20-cm-thick dark layer) and dating to 13,000 CAL
BP, at or close to the age of the YDB datum elsewhere.
This appears to be the most distinctive lithologic change of the deglacial
sequence.

Sediments at or within 10 cm of this contact contain the local extinction of
4 species of bats, the local extinction of the prairie dog (Cynomys sp.) and
perhaps other burrowing mammals in response to decrease in soil thickness,
and the uppermost occurrence of 6 late Pleistocene megafaunal taxa that,
although rare in the cave, do not extend younger than 12.9 ka.

We collected and analyzed sediments at high resolution above and below the
distinct lithologic contact at 151 cm.
The red clays from 151 to 153 cm and immediately preceding the lithologic
contact contain an abundance of nanodiamonds (5 different allotropes),
aciniform soot at 2400 ppm, magnetic spherules, and carbon spherules, all of
which we interpret as evidence for a unique chronostratigraphic marker (YDB)
in the Western Hemisphere.
Because the age of this horizon is ~ 13,000 CAL BP, we interpret the age of
the event as the beginning of the Younger Dryas cooling.
Regional soil erosion began ~15,000 CAL BP and continued until 7000 CAL BP,
but dating suggests that there is no discontinuity or hiatus in deposition,
and thus, the exotic materials in that layer are not considered to be
erosional accumulations.
Future analyses include sub-centimeter sampling over the YD boundary,
quantification of nanodiamonds and other event-proxies within 1000 yr of the
boundary and in sediments several 1000 years older and younger, continued
refinement of the AMS 14C record to determine within 50 yr the location of
12,900 CAL BP datum and high resolution analysis of small animal
biostratigraphy.

[ papers by M. Jennifer "Jenny" Cooke on Hall's Cave research:

mcooke at mail.utexas.edu

2007 http://www.geo.utexas.edu/faculty/banner/Publications/Cooke2007.pdf
11 pages

2003 http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/31/10/853.abstract

2002 http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_40898.htm

2001 http://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/samples/j_cooke.pdf ]



Mark Boslough supercomputer 3D simulations of meteor air bursts becoming
complex directed flows of very high temperature and pressure plasma
plumes -- 2007 -- Dennis Cox gives evidence that this was real on a
continental scale, causing "vertical ablation".

http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/asteroid.html



Perigee Zero: Carolina Bays in the Midwest
15 coments, recent informative discussion of Dennis Cox paradigm

http://cosmictusk.com/perigee-zero-carolina-bays-in-the-midwest#comments



Michael E Davias, LIDAR views of shallow "Carolina Bay"
Nebraska ejecta craters from Holocene impact in Michigan:
Rich Murray 2010.06.03
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.htm
Thursday, June 3, 2010
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http://chemistry.depaul.edu/wwolbach/CV.pdf

vitae of
Wendy S. Wolbach
Department of Chemistry, DePaul University
1110 West Belden Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614-3214
(773) 325-4262 (phone); (773) 325-7421 (fax)
wwolbach at condor.depaul.edu;
http://www.depaul.edu/~wwolbach

Education
1984-1990 The University of Chicago
Ph.D., Chemistry, March 1990
Thesis subject: Study of environmental changes at the Cretaceous-Tertiary
boundary through characterization of reduced carbon.
1980-1984 Franklin & Marshall College

Publications
40. Methods for the Extraction and Purification of Nanodiamonds from
Cretaceous-Tertiary and Younger Dryas Boundary Sediments
Charles R. Kinzie and Wendy S. Wolbach
In progress.

39. Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact event 12,900 years ago that
contributed to megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling - Part 2
L. Becker, R. Poreda, T. Darrah, A. West, J.P. Kennett, D. Kennett, J.M.
Erlandson, R.B. Firestone and W.S. Wolbach
In progress.

38. Evidence for Widespread Biomass-Burning at the Younger Dryas Boundary
(YDB) at 12.9 ka
J.P. Kennett, A. West, P.A. Mayewski, T.E. Bunch, T.W. Stafford, Jr., J.
Ballard, and W.S. Wolbach
In progress.

37. Discovery of Nanodiamond-rich Layer in Polar Ice Sheet (Greenland)
A.V. Kurbatov, P.A. Mayewski, J.P. Steffensen, A. West, D.J. Kennett, J.P.
Kennett, T.E. Bunch, M. Handley, D.S. Introne, S.S. Que Hee, C. Mercer, M.
Sellers, F. Shen, S.B. Sneed, J.C. Weaver, J.H. Wittke, T.W. Stafford, Jr.,
J.J. Donovan, S. Xie, J.J. Razink, A. Stich, and W.S. Wolbach
Submitted to Journal of Glaciology.

36. Tracing the Manson impact event across the Western Interior Cretaceous
Seaway
David J. Varricchio, Christian Koeberl, Russell F. Raven, Wendy S. Wolbach,
William C. Elsik, and Daniel P. Miggins
In: Proceedings of the Conference on Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary
Evolution (eds. W.U. Reimold and R.L. Gibson).
Geological Society of America Special Paper.
In press.

35. Geochemical data reported by Paquay et al. do not refute Younger Dryas
impact event
Ted E. Bunch, Allen West, Richard B. Firestone, James P. Kennett, James H.
Wittke, Charles R. Kinzie, and Wendy S. Wolbach
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, E58 (2010)
doi/10.1073/pnas.1001156107.

34. Shocked-synthesized hexagonal diamonds in Younger Dryas boundary
sediments
Douglas J. Kennett, James P. Kennett, Allen West, G. James West, Ted E.
Bunch, Brendan J. Culleton, Jon M. Erlandson, S. Que Hee Shane, John R.
Johnson, Chris Mercer, Feng Shen, Marilee Sellers, Thomas W. Stafford Jr.,
Adrienne Stich, James C. Weaver, James H. Wittke, Wendy S. Wolbach
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 12623-12628 (2009).

33. Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer
Douglas J. Kennett, James P. Kennett, Allen West, Christopher Mercer, Shane
S. Que Hee, Leland Bement, Ted E. Bunch, Marilee Sellers, Wendy S. Wolbach
Science 323, 94 (2009)

32. Soot and Palynology Analysis of Manson Impact-Related Strata (Upper
Cretaceous) of Iowa and South Dakota, USA
David J. Varricchio, Russell F. Raven, Wendy S. Wolbach, William C. Elsik,
and Brian J. Witzke,
Cretaceous Research 30, 127-134 (2009)

31. Did the Mj?lnir asteroid impact ignite Barents Sea hydrocarbon source
rocks?
Henning Dypvik, Wendy S. Wolbach, Valery Shuvalov, and Susanna L. Widicus
Weaver
In: The Sedimentary Record of Meteorite Impacts (eds. K.R. Evans, J.W.
Horton Jr., D.T. King, and J.R. Morrow).
Geological Society of America Special Paper 437, 65-72 (2008).

30. Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact event 12,900 years ago that
contributed to megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling
R.B. Firestone, A. West, J.P. Kennett, L. Becker, T.E. Bunch, Zs. Revay,
P.H. Schultz, T. Belgya, O.J. Dickenson, J. Erlandson, A.C. Goodyear, R.S.
Harris, G.A. Howard, D.J. Kennett, J.B. Kloosterman, P. Lechler, J.
Montgomery, R. Poreda, T. Darrah, S.S. Que Hee, A.R. Smith, A. Stich, W.
Topping, J.H. Wittke, and W.S. Wolbach
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, 16016-16021 (2007).

29. Fullerenes in the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary
Dieter Heymann and Wendy Wolbach
In: Natural Fullerenes and Related Structures of Elemental Carbon (ed.
F.rans J.M. Rietmeijer). Springer, 191-212 (2006).

28. A Search for Soot from Global Wildfires in Central Pacific
Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary and Other Extinction and Impact Horizon
Sediments
W.S. Wolbach, S.L. Widicus, and F.T. Kyte
Astrobiology 3, 91-97 (2003).

Abstracts
49. Consistency of Younger Dryas Climatic, Biotic and Oceanic Changes with
YDB Cosmic Impact Hypothesis
Kennett, J.P., Kennett, D.J., West, A., Stafford, T.W., Weaver, J.C.,
Wolbach, W., Kinzie, C.
American Quaternary Association Biennial Meeting: Exploring the
Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in the Americas, 12-15 August (2010).

48. Testing Younger Dryas ET Impact (YDB) Evidence at Hall?s Cave, Texas
T.W. Stafford Jr., E. Lundelius, J. Kennett, D.J. Kennett, A. West, W.S.
Wolbach
Eos Trans. AGU, 90 (52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP33B-08 (2009).

47. Evidence for Widespread Biomass-Burning at the Younger Dryas Boundary at
12.9 ka
J. Kennett, P.A. Mayewski, A. West, T.E. Bunch, T.W. Stafford Jr., W.S.
Wolbach
Eos Trans. AGU, 90 (52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP31D-1397 (2009).

46. Are Nanodiamonds Evidence for a Younger Dryas Impact Event?
A. West, J. Kennett, D.J. Kennett, T.E. Bunch, T.W. Stafford Jr., W.S.
Wolbach
Eos Trans. AGU, 90 (52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP33B-02 (2009).

45. Presence of all Three Allotropes of Impact-Diamonds in the Younger Dryas
Onset Layer (YDB) Across N
America and NW Europe
A. West, J.P. Kennett, D.J. Kennett, S.S. Que Hee, W.S. Wolbach, A. Stich,
T.E. Bunch, J.H. Wittke, C.
Mercer, M. Sellers, B.J. Culleton, J.M. Erlandson, J.R. Johnson, T.W.
Stafford, J.C. Weaver, G.J. West,
Eos Trans. AGU, 89 (53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP23D-01 (2008).

44. Hexagonal Diamonds (Lonsdaleite) Discovered in the K/T Impact Layer in
Spain and New Zealand
T.E. Bunch, J.H. Wittke, A. West, J.P. Kennett, D.J. Kennett, S.S. Que Hee,
W.S. Wolbach, A. Stich, C. Mercer, J.C. Weaver
Eos Trans. AGU, 89 (53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP13C-1476 (2008).

43. Impact-Shocked diamonds, Abrupt Ecosystem Disruption, and Mammoth
Extinction on California's Northern Channel Islands at the Allerod-Younger
Dryas Boundary (13.0-12.9 ka)
D.J. Kennett, J.P. Kennett, A. West, G.J. West, T.E. Bunch, B.J. Culleton,
J.M. Erlandson, S.S. Que Hee, J.R. Johnson, C. Mercer, M. Sellers, T.W.
Stafford, A. Stich, J.C. Weaver, J.H. Wittke, W.S. Wolbach
Eos Trans. AGU, 89 (53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP23D-04 (2008).

42. Nanodiamonds in a Stratigraphic Datum Layer Correlated with the
Continent-Wide Younger Dryas Impact Stratum (YDB) at 12.9 ka
W.S. Wolbach, A. West, D.J. Kennett, J.P. Kennett
Eos Trans. AGU, 89 (53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP13C-1473 (2008).

41. Soot as Evidence for Widespread Fires at the Younger Dryas Onset (YDB;
12.9 ka)
A. Stich, G. Howard, J.B. Kloosterman, R.B. Firestone, A. West, J.P.
Kennett, D.J. Kennett, T.E. Bunch, W.S. Wolbach
Eos Trans. AGU, 89 (53), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract PP13C-1471 (2008).

40. Is there evidence for impact-triggered fires at the End Pleistocene?
W.S. Wolbach, A. Stich, J.B. Kloosterman, L. Becker, J. Kennett, R.
Firestone, and A. West
Analytical Sciences Digital Library ( http://www.asdlib.org/index.php ),
Fall 2007 Poster Session.


Dennis Cox sees both holocene impacts and ancient volcanism in Clayton
Craters in SW Egypt -- cites huge Bronze Age solar flare event (Anthony L
Peratt, LANL) -- my Google Earth craters: Rich Murray 2010.08.14
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.htm
Saturday, August 14, 2010
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_______________________________________________


Rich Murray, MA
Boston University Graduate School 1967 psychology,
BS MIT 1964, history and physics,
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
505-501-2298 rmforall at comcast.net

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Received on Fri 20 Aug 2010 01:23:05 AM PDT