Cometary Encounters - Now available!

Congratulations Pierre!!!!

I also enjoyed reading your articles and I find them excellent and very understandable for non-scientific person like myself.

Can´t wait for your new book!!!! :-)
Same for me :-) Thanks to your very clear way to express concepts I come to take an interest in subjects that I would probably not have addressed and while waiting to read this new book I will read the summary of your first one, which my friend took the trouble to do.
 
Excellent Pierre, and your other hard work will aid this endeavor well. If there is a pre-order list, I would love to sign up.

Re the Bays, Carlson makes arguments for the bombardment coming in from a trajectory over Alaska. As for the Venus Fly Trap, that is interesting; good catch Pashalis. Of the Tunguska tree rings, this will be of great interest to read that data. Of the ice (Greenland/Iceland), I keep wondering about this. There are ice cores, yes, and yet there is something about the information that varies between places, and is does not exactly seem open. It has all left some questions that would need to be revisited, and look forward to further reading on all this.

Congratulations!
 
That is a very interesting information. If you have time, I would like to know in which Carlson's intervention you found the reference to life forms which are specific to the Carolina Bays.

Sorry for the delay. I've looked up the reference now and here it is.

In May 2008 Randall Carlson said [04:37]:


Here is the transcript:

Randall:

"All right, so here's an interior [showing the interior of a Carolina Bay]. They're very swampy depressions. One of the things that makes Carolina Bay's unique - and this may be a very important clue - is that they have species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else. For example; Venus flytraps is probably the most famous of the unusual forms of life that are found in Carolina Bays which perhaps suggest something very interesting because associated with the Tunguska explosion there seems to be genetic mutations occurring."

A comment from a listener of the presentation:


"Are they mutations or totally new species?"

Randall:

"Well, I have to [study more]. See; a lot of the research on Tunguska has come available to us [only] in the last five or ten years after the thawing of the Cold War, but I had not the chance to really [dig into it]. And really, a lot of it is being translated out of Russian as we speak. So there's gonna [be] a lot of new stuff, a lot of new information, primarily from Russian research. And Russian researchers have focused a lot on those mutations and stuff associated with you know [the event]. You know like maybe some like new plants and stuff? I'm a little vague on that and that's something I need to research but [it would be] something very valuable to look into further."

Maybe he has found out more since then? I dunno. I think he wouldn't have said back then, that the Carolina Bays have "species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else", if that wouldn't be the case. So the Flytrap might just be one example. Also looking more at russian sources might prove to be interesting in regard to that Comet/Fireball mutation angle in general. I tried to find more references to unique life forms in those bays, but was not successful yet.
 
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I tried to find some references to the flora and fauna in and around the Carolina Bays to maybe find some of the plants and animals Randall was referring to besides the Venus Flytrap. Might be worthwhile to dig a bit deeper into some of those references:


Although most Carolina bays are much smaller, Lake Waccamaw in North Carolina stretches across 9,000 acres with 14 miles of shoreline at the headwaters of the Waccamaw River. It is home to native fish and plants that can only be found in or around the lake.


Carolina bays form unique habitats occupied by several endangered animal and plant species, including bobcat, osprey, bear, mock bishop’s weed, and rose coreopsis.


For Terri Kirby Hathaway, North Carolina Sea Grant’s marine education specialist, the bays’ value as a habitat for many of the state’s rare plant and animal species is clear. [...] While other natural landscapes of the Americas were being named and noted, these low wetlands — unique reservoirs housing a wealth of beautiful and unfamiliar plant and animal species — remained inconspicuous. [...] Yet, she points out that unaltered bays function as wildlife habitat for several endangered animals and rare plants, and support an array of unique communities of species. [...]
“The north shore of the lake is made of a layer of limestone,” Hall notes. “Limestone neutralizes the acid coming from the creeks, making the water a neutral pH.” He explains that the lake’s particular pH allows for a high diversity of plant and animal species.

Along with five species on the state’s rare plant list — the Venus-hair fern, green-fly orchid, seven-angled pipewort, narrowleaf yellow pondlily and water arrowhead — Hall notes seven animal species endemic to Lake Waccamaw. [...]
Some typical pocosin habitats also are suitable homes for rare insectivorous plants, such as the Venus flytrap and pitcher plant. Hall explains that the Venus flytrap only can be found within a 60-mile radius of Wilmington. These peculiar, sun-loving carnivores thrive along the sandy edges of a swampy bay depression.
[...]
Bruce Sorrie, then inventory specialist with the N.C. Natural Heritage Program, described one of these “cypress savannas,” Antioch Church Bay in Hoke County, as the best example of a clay-based bay in the state and one of the best in the country.


“It combines large size, excellent quality natural community, and high-ranked populations of numerous rare plants and animals,” Sorrie noted in a 2004 inventory of Hoke County’s significant natural areas.

The bay is typically shallowly flooded during winter and spring. During summer and fall, it is exposed and hosts a spread of grasses, sedges and colorful wildflowers, such as the rare awned meadowbeauty, Rhexia aristosa.

As of 2004, seven rare animals and 10 rare plants were documented residing in the bay, including one Federally Endangered species and two Federal Species of Concern. Sixteen species of amphibians also were documented for using the bay as a breeding site.

This book might also be interesting:


On Wikipedia 3 endemic fish are mentioned in Lake Waccamaw.

Lake Waccamaw - Wikipedia
 
Also looking more at russian sources might prove to be interesting in regard to that Comet/Fireball mutation angle in general. I tried to find more references to unique life forms in those bays, but was not successful yet.

There are some interesting rare plants in the area of Tunguska impact (translated via deepl), fwiw:

Plants with the widest range are called cosmopolitans. Slightly less common are plants with a holarctic range. Most cosmopolitans and holarctic plants are found in almost all domestic nature reserves and do not need additional protection - but, unlike cosmopolitans, there are also plants that need protection among holarctic plants, which have a very wide range but are also universally rare.
Bright representatives of this group of plants in the [Tunguska] reserve are terrestrial orchids - calypso bulbous and common lady's slipper orchid. These plants are very beautiful and unusual, but occur rarely enough and are included in the Red Books of Krasnoyarsk Territory and Russia. Such plants are protected in many nature reserves.
On the other hand, there are also plants with a very small range, called endemics. Most endemics are protected only in a few nature reserves around the globe - because these species simply do not exist elsewhere.
Examples of this group of plants include the Catang's Oxytrope, found only in Central Siberia, and Iris of Bludov, found only in southern Siberia - the Tunguska Reserve is located at the northernmost limit of the distribution range of this species.
Both of these species are included in the Red Books of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
However, the most interesting endemic found here in the Tunguska Nature Reserve is Astragalus of Shumilov. This plant can survive in only one place on the entire globe - in southern Evenkia, between the rivers Podkamennaya Tunguska and Chunya. Thus, the only reserve in the world that protects this fantastically rare species is the Tunguska Nature Reserve.
 
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