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Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
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Nov 19 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Many Twitter archaeologists are pointing out problems with the #AncientApocalypse Netflix series, so I also wanted to remind folks that the central premise of the show-- a global comet impact event 13,000 years ago-- has been widely discredited by the Quaternary paleo community.
The Younger Dryas impact theory is popular with a lot of apocalypse preppers, conspiracy theorists, pseudoscience peddlers, and climate deniers, though.
I wish television producers could see that Earth's history is interesting enough that we don't need sensationalism to tell a great story. Or, you know, that the ingenuity and expertise of Indigenous peoples don't need to be explained by aliens or lost civilizations.
P.S. Not all ideas are rejected because people don’t have an open mind. Some ideas are just ultimately proven to be wrong. And that’s how science works! What’s not okay is cherry-picking or manipulating data, or rejecting criticism just because you want your idea to be true.

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More from @JacquelynGill

Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Nov 9
I know it can be frustrating to see polls that indicate that Americans rank climate lower than things like the economy when it comes to the elections. Instead of being angry that climate isn't the top priority, we should be using this as a motivation for climate collaboration. 🧵
Where I live in Maine, the rising price of food and oil are huge concerns, and one of the biggest election motivators. A recent Maine Public story quoted several people who have said climate "ranks well below those." But remember: the economy is a climate issue!
Instead of: "Well, they shouldn't be using oil in the first place! It's good that it's expensive!"

Try: "Getting people to use heat pumps is a win for the economy AND for climate. How can we do that? What are the barriers to making heat pumps and electrification affordable?"
Read 10 tweets
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Sep 8
The British monarchy has only existed for 0.0000000922298041% of Earth's history. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, have been around for 78% of that time.
I did the math.
Here, have a thread about why we owe everything to cyanobacteria:
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Sep 7
Ten utterly random catastrophes in Earth history that we have to thank for life as we know it (a 🧵):

1) The formation of the 🌕 some 4.5 billion years ago, thiught to be the outcome of a Mars-sized planet smashing into Earth in the early years of our solar system.
2) After over a billion years of experimenting, a bunch of cyanobacteria randomly figured out how to photosynthesize ~2.3 billion years ago, releasing the first oxygen, which was toxic to a lot of early life at the time (whoops).
3) 600 million years ago, our planet went into a deep freeze in a global ice age known as “snowball Earth.” The nutrient-rich rock eroded by glaciers may have fertilized the oceans, giving way to the “Cambrian Explosion” of new, diverse, complex life forms.
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Sep 6
Stop doom-scrolling and have a nature break. Here are some highlights from today’s field lab.

Behold these tiny baby mushrooms growing on the remnants of an older, rotting fungus. A black rotten fungus with tiny white mushrooms growing on i
Oak shoots sprouting from a beaver-chewed stump. An old stump chewed to a comical point by a beaver, with sho
The flattened grass and tunnel mark a muskrat’s pathway to the pond beyond. Tall grass smoothed down by a muskrat, leading to a pond.
Read 13 tweets
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Sep 6
Put a finger down if you are fascinated by Earth history and you wish you understood it better.

Put a finger down if your feed has become so negative that it's wearing on your mental health, and you could use more wonder.
Put a finger down if you you're anxious about the state of the climate and biodiversity crises and you'd like to understand the science better.

Put a finger down if you love Earth history, geoscience, and paleontology but you've never seen yourself represented in those fields.
Put a finger down if you care about accessibility; justice, equity and inclusion; and compensating people for the work they do -- including creative work, which is real work!

How many fingers do you have left?
Read 7 tweets
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill Profile picture
Sep 5
Eleven days to go, and not yet halfway to our goal for @MakeAPlanetPod. We’ll be doing a final countdown starting tomorrow, after giving things a rest for the normal “middle slump” of crowd-funding. I’m hoping we can still make this happen, but I’ll be honest: I’m discouraged.
Some of it seems to be what I can only interpret as Twitter suppressing links to crowdfunding sites. That’s frustrating, because it takes away our primary method of getting the word out there. Is that all of it? I dunno. Maybe @MakeAPlanetPod is too niche?
After years of burnout, @MakeAPlanetPod was supposed to be a way to reconnect with the joy and wonder that brought me to science. I thought it would be something other folks would get behind, too—especially paying creatives what they’re worth, and making an accessible show.
Read 4 tweets

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