The Carolina Bays, one of the most conspicuous geomorphic features on the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the United States, are a group of about 500,000, oriented, crater-like, elliptical lakes, wetlands, and depressions, ranging from a few dozen meters to about 11 km in length. Although long proposed as impact structures (Melton and Schriever, 1933; Prouty, 1934), this origin for the Carolina Bays has remained controversial mainly because of an apparent absence of associated extraterrestrial materials. Analyses of Bay orientation showed that their long axes converge near the Great Lakes, suggesting that an impact or airburst over that region may have formed the Bays (Eyton and Parkhurst, 1975).However, Bays dates have been reported over a wide range, calling into question whether all Carolina Bays could have formed simultaneously, although this issue remains unresolved and controversial. Many Bay researchers, who subscribe to widely differing theories, agree that modern Carolina Bays have been subject to repeated modification and that they most likely evolved from some type of ancestral depressions.
Now for the first time, we present conclusive geochemical and sedimentary evidence in support of an extraterrestrial connection for the Carolina Bays. Analyses of sediment from the rim sands and basins of fifteen Bays, widely distributed across North and South Carolina, reveal anomalously high abundances of microspherules, iridium, fullerenes with ET helium, carbon spherules, glass-like carbon, and other potential markers for extraterrestrial impact. No such markers were found in paleosols beneath the rim sands or basal sediments of the Bays examined. The assemblage of geochemical and sediment signatures of extraterrestrial impact found in Bay sediments are essentially the same as in the pan-North-American Younger Dryas impact boundary layer (the YDB), dated at 12.9 ka.
We hypothesize that at least some Bays were formed by the YD impact during the last deglacial, and we present OSL and radiocarbon dating, along with stratigraphic profiling, in support of this age. Data from the Carolina Bays we have examined suggest that at least some modern Carolina Bays may have evolved from depressions which were excavated by primary ejecta, secondary ejecta, and/or the shock wave from the Younger Dryas impact event.
Are you convinced??? The fly in the ointment seems to be differing dates of the bays themselves. Odd.