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9 June 2008
Geoarchaeology: Footprints in ash and the first people in North America
National Geographic News has published an article about the results of new dating methods used on footprints in volcanic ash in Mexico. The quarry where the footprints were discovered in 2003 is located in Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin (and near the Cerro Toluquilla volcano). The footprints were originally dated in 2005, when an international team of geoarchaeologists concluded that the footprints had been created more than 40,000 years ago. (Image from …
12 March 2008
!!!
Dates! I finally have dates on my ash flow tuff! Three beautiful total fusion dates. And it only took a year and a couple of months to get them! … I probably sound waaaay too excited for that kind of turnaround time.
17 January 2008
Residence time of lab samples
Here’s an situation I’ve been dealing with for a while. During the research I did for my undergraduate thesis in the summer of 2006, I collected a number of samples to use for Ar-Ar dating, with the intention that I would actually accompany them to a lab and learn the processes involved in mineral separation, irradiation, analysis, etc. Fast forward to January and February of 2007, where I (after much …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.